Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/79

 Rh middle class. The Conservative Party, on the other hand, is under clerical domination, and consists for the most part of the lower classes and peons who are staunch supporters of the Church. Of course, the whole object of the Church is to regain its lost property, and to this end the entire weight of its political battery is directed. Its wonderful persistence in the face of such powerful odds as it meets with in the enlightened section of Mexican opinion would be touching, if it were not pitiful. It is, indeed, a lost cause of the most consummate character. For the most part, the common people are ignorant of the principles for which they vote. They only know that their suffrages are given in the cause of religion, and that knowledge fully suffices for them, or did so until quite recently.

But if the Church has certainly been a factor making for internal dissension, a very thorn in the flesh of the enlightened classes of Mexico, a much stronger element of dissatisfaction was awakened in Mexico through the conditions which of late years obtained in the Republic. The long régime of Diaz, peaceful and prosperous as it was, had an intensely irritating effect upon the younger members of the Liberal party. Diaz had surrounded himself by a group of men whose political interests were identical with his own, and their attitude, as we shall find, was responsible for the outbreak of the Revolution which ensued.