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 260 MEXICO. fessing any but the Catholic religion, could legally be en- titled. With regard to Foreigners, residing as such in the Mexican territory, but few concessions have yet been made ; nor has it been found possible to establish, as a right, the public or private exercise of the Protestant religion ; although the wishes of his Majesty^s Government upon this subject were complied with by Buenos Ayres, and, under certain limita- tions, by Columbia likewise. In Mexico, the third article of the Federal Act rendered a similar compliance impossible. It becomes, therefore, inter- esting to enquire by what means New Spain has been thrown so far behind the sister states of the South in point of rational toleration. It is to the history of the Revolution that we must look for the causes of the difference, which now prevails; for, in 1810, it may fairly be assumed that superstition and intolerance were pretty equally disseminated throughout the Spanish Colonies in the New World. But, in Buenos Ayres, since the first declaration of the independence (May 1810), not a single Spanish soldier has entered the territory of the Re- public : the intercourse with Foreigners has been constantly open, and constantly kept up ; and it would have been hard indeed, if, in thirteen years, the minds of the people had not been prepared, by the gradual amalgamation of interests which has taken place, to entertain a more indulgent view of the religion of those Foreigners, than that which their former masters had laboured to inculcate. In Columbia, the case has been different in some respects, although in others nearly the same. A general freedom of intercourse with Europe was not, indeed, immediately esta- blished, but a numerous corps of foreign auxiliaries joined, at a very early period, the Independent standard, and fought the battles of the Republic against the armies of Murillo. It was after more than one victory, in which this corps had