Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/196

192 for the procurement of at least a summary of European and the principal American intelligence. Financial reasons, traditions, and custom make news important in Mexico in this order: first, English; second, Spanish and Continental European; lastly, North American. The papers are very partisan, in that respect imitating the press generally of all countries. The "Times" of London, in its "opinions," is no broader than the narrowest faction print of Mexico; and the news upon which its editorial utterances are based, in affairs political and religious, is quite as trustworthy as its opinions are unbiassed. Last summer it printed from Rome a story that the Jesuits had poisoned the Pope, and that they alone possessed the antidote by which his life could be saved. They consented to save it on condition that he should issue an encyclical restoring to the order its full privileges, etc. This romance was printed with perfect soberness in the telegraphic columns; and an editorial, ponderous and a column long, declared that the Jesuits ought not to be blamed, but that the vanity of the pontiff in consenting to save his life at such a price was deplorable. We never