Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/188

184 India. There is no abstract theory yet devised by man superior to natural avarice enforced by arms.

A patriot priest, the divine instinct of nationality carrying him above the dreaming masses of his fellow-countrymen, at length arose against the Spanish domination. He paid with his life for his devotion to his country, but the death of Hidalgo blew the breath of liberty into Mexico. His country relapsed for a time under the old oppression. In another decade she made another desperate and more successful, but far from sufficient, effort; and, when the flag of the republic was unfurled in 1821, the symbol upon it was that of the old native race, — the eagle and cactus, the emblems of the Aztecs. A people without means of inter-communication, of different languages, in whom the poetry of paganism was often mingled with a dull understanding of Christian principles; whose more subdued classes scarcely cared to be awakened to exertion, and whose intellectualized caste was filled with languid selfishness; a people who had no interest in their land, no manufactures, no education; whose wants were simple and easily supplied;