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254 has been totally uninfluenced by party bias or feeling, in his remarks on the Mexican priesthood and their usages in Chapters VIII., IX., and X., of Volume I. Any reader in a position to judge impartially of the subject, must own, on examination, that nothing but the truth has been told. The priests in Mexico are less prepared by education for their holy office, than are the humblest of their class in Europe; in a partially civilized country like the one in question, they have little accountability, and are under few restraints; and, under such circumstances, greater temptations both to rapacity and licentiousness, are held out to them. In the chapters alluded to, it was the writer's object, honestly and truthfully to expose the workings of a system, in a land where nefarious "priestly doings" need assume no disguise; and therefore any attempt to conceal the injurious nature of such an ecclesiastical policy, or the vice and ignorance of its ministers, would have been criminal: for to them is undeniably attributable much of the suffering and degradation pressing so heavily upon the whole community. The facts adduced are their own best interpreters and need no comment.