Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/43

14 —to fear God, the priest and the magistrate, Religion gave no help; and the ceremonies of worship benumbed the intellect as much as they fascinated the senses.

When independence arrived, however, there sprang up not a little enthusiasm for the education of the people, and the states moved quite generally in that direction. But there were scarcely any good teachers, few schoolhouses and only the most inadequate books and appliances; money could not be found; and the prelates, now chiefly absorbed in their political avocations, not only failed to promote the cause, but stood in the way of every step toward secular schools. A few of the leaders—notably Santa Anna—professed great zeal, but this was all for effect, and they took for very different uses whatever funds could be extorted from the nation. In 1843 a general scheme of public instruction was decreed, but no means were provided to carry it into effect. The budget for 1846 assigned $29,613 to this field, of which $8000 was intended for elementary schools, while for the army and navy it required nearly twenty-two millions. In short, though of course a limited number of boys and a few girls acquired the rudiments—and occasionally more—in one way or another, no system of popular education existed.

Higher instruction was in some respects more flourishing. Before the revolution the School of Mines, occupying a noble and costly edifice, gave distinction to the country; the university was respectable; an Academy of Fine Arts did good work; and botany received much attention. But at the university mediaeval Latin, scholastic and polemic theology, Aristotle and arid comments on his writings were the staples, and even these innocent subjects had to be investigated under the awful eye of the Inquisition. Speculation on matters of no practical significance formed the substance of the work, and the young men learned that Worst of lessons—to discourse volubly and plausibly on matters of which they knew nothing. This course of discipline, emphasizing the natural bent of the Creoles. turned out a set of conceited rhetoricians, ignorant of history and the real world, but eager to distinguish themselves by some brilliant experiment. When the yoke of Spain had been cast off, all these institutions declined greatly, and the university became so unimportant that in 1843 it was virtually destroyed;