Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/161

Rh all over Mexico, as much for the comfort of these drones of the social hive, as for the worship and glory of God. Most of the lucrative benefices came in this manner into the hands of the Spaniards and their descendants; and by far the greater portion of the higher ecclesiastics were, either influentially allied, or were persons of elevated social rank. Thus it is that even at the present day so many men of distinguished manners and monarchical tendencies, are found among the "high clergy" of Mexico; for the epoch of the revolution is not so distant that the old ecclesiastical stock has entirely departed from earth.

But since the laws of primogeniture have been abolished,—and, with them, the ecclesiastical privilege of enforcing the payment of tithes to the clergy,—the church has been no longer regarded by the best classes as a favorite resort or refuge for their children. The revolution, as we have said, disorganized the establishment and infused inferior men into the sacred ranks. The material of the several brotherhoods degenerated in quality if not in quantity. The irregularities of the friars became proverbial throughout the republic, and respectable families regarded it as a calamity, or, even sometimes, as a degradation, to hear their members pronounce a monastic vow. Thus, whilst the church became unpopular among the upper classes as a means of subsistence,—its numbers were gradually filled and maintained from the humbler ranks, whose ignorance and disorderly habits tend more and more to widen the difference between the secular and the regular clergy of the republic. It is needless to dwell on the baleful influence which such debased and pretended ministers of religion, must exercise among the common classes of a society over which their ecclesiastical authority and the sanctity of their profession gives them control in such a country as Mexico.

We deem it proper to sustain the allegations made especially against a large number of the Mexican clergy by citations from American, English and Spanish authors upon the country, in addition to the quotation already given from Rivero's "Mexico in 1842."

Mr. Norman, in his Rambles in Yucatan, whilst graphically describing certain festivals, and among them those of Christmas and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, says:—"The people testify their respect for those festal days,—for so they are denominated,—by processions and such amusements as are suited. Notwithstanding the acknowledged debasing effects of their sports and