Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/277

 MEXICO. 239 to the prejudice, and exclusion of the Natives; and these were offences which no virtues could redeem. They suffi- ciently account for the fact of so many of the first leaders of the Revolution having been Clergymen : Hidalgo, Morelos, Matamoros, and numberless others, who perished during the war, were Curas, or Parish priests ; and the facility with which they induced the lower classes to follow their stand- ards, at a time, when out of twenty of their adherents nine- teen knew nothing of the rights of the cause in which they were engaged, is no mean proof of the advantages which the Crown might have derived from their support, had it been secured by a timely participation in the honours of their pro- fession. As it was, they were compelled, like the rest of the Creoles, to seek in the Independence of their country the enjoyment of those rights, of which they were deprived ; and although the attempt failed in 1810, and the first insurrection (which may be termed the insurrection of the Clergy) was almost sup- pressed, still, without it, that of the Army in 1821 would never have taken place, and Mexico might have been, to this day, a Province of Spain. The fatal influence of the Clergy is frequently insisted upon, both in Calleja's letter to the King, and in the repre- sentation of the Audiencia to the Cortes, to which I have so often had occasion to allude, {Vide Appendix ;) and there is no doubt that the fact of so many Curas being engaged on the Independent side, could alone have destroyed the efficacy of those spiritual weapons, of which the Viceregal Govern- ment endeavoured to avail itself at the commencement of the contest. Excommunications fell harmless when directed against persons, whose sacred character acted as a shield against them ; and Hidalgo was not the less respected, or the less implicitly obeyed, by his followers, because declared, both by the Inquisition and by the Bishop of Valladolid, to le no longer within the pale of the Church, although such a