Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/193

Rh superior judges held office for life. The people received the guarantee of equality before the law, security for person and property — slavery and confiscation being forbidden — and liberty to proclaim their opinions. Care was taken to alleviate the oppression weighing upon laborers, especially Indians, by limiting the deduction for debts to one fifth of the pay, abolishing corporal punishment, and prohibiting fathers from binding their children to employers. But these, like many other excellent measures, were frustrated by corrupt officials, disorderly state of affairs, and other circumstances.

The emperor certainly had a greater taste for issuing laws than firmness and power to carry them out; and toward the end of this year there came in a flood of enactments, many of them being revivals of colonial decrees. A characteristic effort was made in behalf of education, for the spread of rudimentary knowledge and the establishment of secondary schools, while the empress fostered benevolent institutions. Amid the great care lavished on court routine, it may be readily understood that the theatre received attention.