Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/414

Rh, hopeless and impoverished, and living without those sanctions and restraints that alone make life valuable or useful. Such were the reckless crews that first set forward in the conquest of this hemisphere, without the common sympathies of humanity; regardless of the laws of nature or nations, and, indeed, heedless of everything but the acquisition of treasure or territory, by a warfare that degenerated into the murder of people to whom the name of the Spanish king, or the idea of the Christian's God, had never been revealed, even in their wildest dreams.

Thus was the foundation of the new Empire laid, in the violent destruction of an ancient religion and monarchy.

Families of character and distinction soon came over, and the new domain was rapidly filled with a population willing to take advantage of its resources;—but several things impeded the social and moral progress of New Spain.

It was but a colony; and a colony, too, devoted by the mother country to none of those branches of industry that foster the independent and manly growth of a people, and bring out the mind of a nation. It was the mine and mint of Spain.

It was taught to believe, that silver was a sort of vegetable product of the earth, growing like flowers, and to be had for the asking. And thus at the outset of its career, the germ of industrious self-reliance and independence, was withdrawn from the fostering policy of the parent State. Commerce, manufactures, and an extensive agriculture,—looking to all parts of the world as its consumers,—were discouraged, and the infant colony was forced to receive from Spain the results of her industry, while, in turn, it sent nothing back that indicated genius, talent, activity, enterprise, invention;—or, indeed, anything but that its valleys and hills contained exhaustless quantities of precious metals, which it could drag from their recesses and transmute into coin by the labor of enslaved and ignorant Indians.

Nor was New Spain opened to the colonization of other nations, who might have been invited to a healthful and energizing mixture of races. On the contrary, the Spaniards grafted themselves upon the conquered and debased aborigines, and the mongrel blood became dull and indolent. Although the laws of the Indies were calculated to protect the natives, they, nevertheless, suffered dreadfully under the prescriptive administration of colonial power; and, becoming the victims of avarice, were gradually degraded, step by step, to the helot condition in which we find them at the present day.

"Instead of restraints on the claims of ecclesiastics, the inconsiderate zeal of the Spanish legislators," says Dr. Robertson, "admitted them into America to their full extent, and at once imposed on the Spanish colonies a burden, which is in no slight degree oppressive to society, even in its most improved state. As early as the year 1501, the payment of tithes in the colonies was enjoined, and the mode of it regulated by law. Every