Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/53

Rh and education of the planter, if he lives constantly on his estate,—which is not universally the case,—are altogether different from those of the North American land-holder. The Mexican possesses few or none of those social and intellectual qualities that have been cultivated by the North American in the best colleges and circles of his country; nor does he enjoy equal facilities of intercommunication between the cities or rural districts of Mexico. The immense size of his plantation which sometimes extends several leagues in length and breadth, necessarily disperses instead of congregating a populous neighborhood. "He is master of all he surveys,—he is lord of the fowl and the brute," but his dominion is a solitary and cheerless one. Few, and irregular posts rarely bring him the news of what occurs in the great world. Visits are seldom and ceremoniously paid. He must find within himself the constant springing source of vivacity and of an ambitious desire for progress, or he must subside into mere animal existence. The latter is unfortunately in most instances the natural result, and it is therefore not at all astonishing to find Mexican planters or their mayordomos devoting all their energies to the maintenance of the servile system we have described, whilst their statute-book and constitution profess to have abolished slavery.

Whilst such is the effect upon the character of the master or his representative, it is natural to suppose that the character of the servant will be equally degraded by the want of those new ideas with which the constant refreshing intercourse of society ventilates the mind. The Indian knows no world but that bounded by his horizon. Slavery, when involuntary, may even be respected in the sufferer, but the Indian who becomes a slave in spite of law, by religious superstition, loathsome vices, and time-hallowed, servility, sinks far below the level of the African, who is sober, careful, faithful to his master and his family, and either from imitation, or a degree of natural dignity, seeks to acquire respectability among his fellow slaves.

"It is hardly possible," says Mühlenpfordt, "to judge of the true character and intellectual capacity of the Indian at a time when he has but just partially recovered his rights as man, and has had little opportunity of giving independent culture to his mental faculties. Though the civic oppression under which the Spaniards and Creoles held all the copper colored race and the colored people generally before the revolution, has, for the most part disappeared, yet their emancipation has, as yet, only nominally taken place. Hierarchial oppression has yet hardly decreased, and the clergy, both