Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/186

182 by Spain in Mexico seems to have always regarded the attainment of three things or results as the object for which it was mainly constituted, and to have allowed nothing of sentiment or of humanitarian consideration to stand for one moment in the way of their rigorous prosecution and realization. These were, first, to collect and pay into the royal treasury the largest possible amount of annual revenue; second, to extend and magnify the authority and work of the established Church; third, to protect home [i.e. Spanish] industries." Is not that the description of the English domination in Ireland? The consequences are curiously correspondent. The land in Mexico, like the land in Ireland, is owned by a small number of proprietors. The tillers in Mexico have no more interest in the results of their toil, than had the tenants in Ireland prior to the beginning of the land-reform era forced upon the English Government by the people of Ireland. The Mexican landlords reside abroad in large numbers, like the absentee landlords of Ireland; and the money produced by the soil flows out of Mexico in exports of bullion for these absentees and their