Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/97

Rh. Unfortunately, the measure was an incomplete one; it was but a half-measure, arising out of the state of things which the sovereign had caused, desirous of pleasing the two extreme parties. By this decree of emancipation the peons were not rendered proprietors of the soil. And yet in what better hands than those of the enfranchised peons could the state have entrusted 'those waste lands' spoken of in the imperial manifesto to the minister Velasquez, when his majesty regretted that, for want of an accurate estimation of the extent and value of these lands, they could not be handed over to industrious families? The Mexican commission constituted for more than a year, but constituted in vain, had not been able to foresee that it would not do to enfranchise a whole race of labourers without giving them at the same time the requisite field of labour. The Mexican government thus lost (as it had already lost Slaughter's 25,000 soldiers, all labourers or artisans) some millions of vigorous colonists, possessing to a high degree the love of marriage and family ties. They were forced to beg their daily bread, if the proprietors of the haciendas did not engage them on their farms. Now, the hacenderos, being deprived by this decree both of the payment of their claims and of the strong arms of their peons, were discontented, and refused to employ the services of those Indians who wished to profit by their legal liberation. Thus it was that the old condition of bondage for the peon fatally revived; in the fear of seeing his family perish of hunger, he, of his own accord, resumed his chain.

On the other hand, the clergy had become the personal enemies of the crown; they, too, countenanced the discontent of the hacenderos, being anxious to recover their evil influence over the peons, whose emancipation