Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/766

746 particularly in war times. Those who were married generally received permission to remain. They did not as a rule enjoy great favor, to judge by decrees to protect them from abuse, and it was only in later times, with the spread of French and English literature, that the better classes began to form comparisons in favor of hitherto despised Europeans.

If torn by discord the white people in New Spain at the opening of the present century were nevertheless united in oppressing the lower orders, through whom they obtained wealth, and to a certain extent position, the Europeans being impelled to greater recklessness by want of sympathy for a people and country strange to them, and regarded only as a means to fortune. Indians, as the most remote in kinship, were oppressed more than others. We have seen how at first nearly all were distributed as serfs to labor on plantations, in mines, on roads, and in towns; how they were often torn from home and family, and dragged to a bitter death; how their complaints were carried by kind-hearted friars to the throne to evoke reforms—ineffective though they proved in only too many cases—and how they were gradually liberated from the control of encomenderos and placed under crown agents, free to sell their labor to whom they pleased. Maltreatment now became comparatively rare, but oppression hardly less cruel was practised by greedy officials, who used their position to extort products and labor in return for useless articles. During their term of five years, some of these corregidores and alcaldes mayores managed to rob their