188 



MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



struo-o-le. the exultation of victory and the consciousness of nascent strength tended 

 to create à Mexican nation in the true sense of the term. From that time dates 

 the real history of modern Mexico. 



The annexation of Mexico to its powerful northern neighbour, an event confi- 

 dently foretold by so many politicians as inevitable, becomes daily more improbable as 

 the country continues to increase in wfealth and population. The centres of gravity 

 of the Mexican and Anglo-Saxon republics will always be separated by a distance 

 of at least 1,500 or 1,600 miles, and the intervening space largely consists of arid 

 regions, where the population must always remain scattered. The zone of dis- 

 affected states, which American adventurers had endeavoured to constitute in the 

 north between Sonora and Tamaulipas, with the view of dividing the republic and 



Fig. 81.— PoLiTicAi Divisions of Mexico. 

 Scale 1 : 30,000,000. 



620 Miles. 



annexing it piecemeal, have resumed their place as integral members of the 

 political organism. Thus Mexico and the United States seem destined to remain 

 distinct ethnological domains. 



Every Mexican citizen is regarded as a freeman, with the right of choosing 

 his own domicile, of associating with whomsoever he listeth, of coming and going 

 whithersoever he pleaseth, of bearing arms and freely expressing his thoughts 

 either verbally or through the press. No titles of nobility or hereditary preroga- 

 tives are recognised, and all citizens are considered, in virtue of the constitution, 

 as equal before the lavv. All are electors on the single condition of themselves 

 signing their voting-papers. Even foreigners become citizens on acquiring pro- 

 perty in the countr}', or when children are born to them, unless within a period 

 of eight months they express a formal desire to keep their first nationality. 



