Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/17



XII General Education, and entire Domestic Tranquillity, what might not Mexico become in a few years under the hand of a strong and virtuous Government! During my residence there and my travels throughout the Republic, I had often to recognize fine talents, good personal qualities, and vast natural resources, but all, generally neglected or denied the opportunity of advancement. I never saw a moden plough on a Mexican farm, a rake in a husbandman's hand, a wheelbarrow in a laborer's grasp, a cart bearing the ordinary burthens of trade, or a Bible in a Mexican house! That strange race of antique men in which Celti-Gallic, Celt-Iberian, Carthagenian, Roman, Vandalic, Visigothic and Moorish blood had mingled, was, again, crossed in Mexico by the Indian, and even dashed, in some instances, with the African. It is a mosaic blood and furnishes a curious matter for the study of physiologists. It is a race striving for new things, yet regretting to quit its grasp on the old. In speculation it looks forward; yet, in the Superstitions of Religion and in the crude primitiveness of Art and Trade, it cleaves to the past. Mexico is a graft rather of the wild Arab on the base Indian, than of the Spanish Don on the noble Aztec. From the bondage of superstitious custom. Mexico requires disenthralment. But, to effect this delivery she must have imposed on her by a firm hand. Since 1823, no less than seventeen revolutions have succeeded her rejection of the Spanish yoke. Can it be said that such a nation is competent to govern itself? Has it ever governed itself? Nay, has it done so, peacefully, even for a single year? Can such a miscalled democracy have an effective public opinion? With rulers shifting like the winds, what permanent policy can such a government pursue. Indeed, in all her vicissitudes, in what has Mexico exhibited the slightest symptom of constancy, save in her deep, immedicable hostility to our Union?

If this were a mere abstract, sapless dislike,—a sort of hereditary hatred like that between France and England or between the Genoese, the Tuscans and the Neapolitans—we might pass it over and trust to Time to make us better friends; but this animosity is growing into an active, untiring, energetic, agent of annoyance, until we see no possible termination to our difficulties but such authoritative interposition as will convince Mexico that this Union means to maintain its station as head of the American governments, and is resolved to put an end forever to the idea of European interference in the affairs of our Continent. This is a policy that should be adopted, and, if successfully pursued, would unquestionably terminate in a firm alliance between the two Republics and the formation of a treaty, offensive and defensive, which would secure our perpetual amity.

In regard to the domestic peace of Mexico, I have great hesitation in speaking with any certainty as to a mode by which it might be secured. The notion, broached in European and American papers, that Mexico is willing to establish a monarchy and receive a royal scion of some European house to grace her throne, is only one of the thousand ridiculous surmises that are hazarded by blundering paragraphists. Nothing can be