Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/95

Rh country mean any thing at all, the retired official who owns it understands financiering to a degree which makes Boss Tweed a bungler, and Eno a child in petticoats. During the few years of his administration, he is credited with personal subsidies on the national treasury, so continued, so enormous, and so splendidly audacious, as to lift them into the region of high art. On the principle that the man who kills another man is called a murderer, while the one who kills ten thousand others becomes a hero, his transactions, which would seem to belong of right to the New-gate Calendar, are considered in the light of diplomatic triumphs; and, to all appearances, his people are proud of his repute. The only difference of opinion we found in his regard was as to whether he had taken out three millions of dollars or twenty-three. If, as is reported, he has built other palaces and other properties as beautiful as this, he has probably done as much good with the money as if it were left to sink in internecine squabbles, or be stolen by other revolutionary communists; and no doubt he salves his battered conscience with this moral reflection. The present incumbent is made of better stuff.