Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/63

1864.] greatness, the career she has yet to commence and run. We look toward her, and we see the day-spring of a glorious national existence arising within her bounds."

When we look at this picture, drawn by hope and fancy, and then turn to the reality,—when we see Mexico as she is, the blankest failure of the century,—when we run over her forty years of anarchy, with its four constitutions and twenty-seven plans of government, with its bewildering array of presidents and dictators that come and go until the eye is wearied and the memory fails to preserve even their names,—when we behold her the helpless victim of any power that chooses to assail her,—when, in short, we compare the Mexico that is with the Mexico that was to be,—we ask ourselves, What are the causes which have made so many advantages worse than futile?—what fate has ordained that so much sacrifice and so much blood should be lavished, and in vain? That is the very question we seek to answer.

We begin with what is the true foundation of all national fortunes, the character and social relations of the people. It is the profound remark of a profound man, that "you can create no national spirit where no nation is." That is at the root of Mexico's troubles. She is not in any proper sense a nation. All her sufferings have not as yet moulded her diverse elements into any real and efficient unity. Modern Mexico, dating from the Conquest, was founded, not upon social unity, but upon the widest social divergence. At one end of the scale, high up in luxury and pride, was the Spanish Conqueror and oppressor. At the other, deep down as degradation could go, the crushed and cowering descendant of the native races. Between them the half-bloods, with the vices of both and the virtues of neither. The Spaniard did all that he could to dig deep and broad this gulf of separation between the classes, and to make it perpetual. As if to stamp inequality in biting phrase upon men's speech, he called the whites people with reason, the Indians people without reason.

Look, then, first at the condition of the native races under this Colonial authority. In the beginning, they were literally slaves, bound to the withering toil of the mines. Then they became serfs, mere appendages to estates. And when the progress of light swept away this institution, and gave them a nominal freedom, still they were in the eye of the law in a state of perpetual minority. They were simply grown-up children. They were confined in villages, out of which they could not go, and into which the white could not come. They were held to be incapable of making contracts above a sum equal to five of our dollars. The very men who were set to watch over their interests, by enticing them into debts which they would not pay, changed their legal freedom into a peonage, which was actual, and too often life-long, slavery. Says Chevalier,—"These functionaries acquired for themselves troops of slaves. They constituted themselves arbitrarily creditors of the Indians by forcing them to buy, at unreasonable prices, horses, mules, and clothing. The Indians, never being able to pay, were forced to work for them, and this obligation to work, or, to speak more clearly, this servitude, once contracted, was easily made perpetual." Here, then, we have in Colonial Mexico, at the foundation of the State, the Indian, whom oppression had made but half a man.

Just above them were the half-bloods. These were not slaves. They were not serfs. They were not considered to be children of a larger growth. It was expressly said of them that they were "rational people." But they had burdens of their own. Having little social position and less education, incapable by nature of that sullen patience which kept the Indian from chafing under his yoke, they were both more unhappy and more demoralized. The crimes against property, the robberies on the highway, could for the most part be traced to the