MEXICANS AND SPANIARDS. 



53 



from them ; and having been habituated to the 

 enjoyment of exclusive privileges, could not recon- 

 cile themselves to share their fortunes and long 

 established rights, with their former dependants. 

 Being conscious that these feelings rendered them 

 unworthy of confidence, they naturally inferred, 

 that in reality they were not trusted. In this 

 frame of mind, they lived in constant dread of 

 popular vengeance, and often gave way to terrors 

 from causes insignificant, or imaginary. When 

 they met together, they never failed to augment 

 one another's fears, by repeating stories of the 

 threats and insults they had met with ; and spoke 

 of the various symptoms of enmity on the part of 

 the free Americans, who, they said, were only 

 waiting for an opportunity to expel them from 

 the country. 



The correspondence also which they maintained 

 with all parts of the interior contributed, in a 

 remarkable degree, to heighten these feelings of 

 alarm ; since it was impossible to investigate 

 every idle report which came from a distance. 

 They were also absurdly unguarded in the terms 

 which they used in speaking of the native inhabit- 

 ants of the country. They delighted, for instance, 

 in conversation to contrast their own "superior 

 illustracion " with the "ignorancia barbara" of 

 the Mexicans ; and if any one of us, who were 

 indifferent parties, ventured to insinuate, that this 

 ignorance of the natives might, perhaps, have been 

 produced by the manner in which the country 

 had been governed ; and that, possibly, there 

 might be much intellectual wealth among the 

 inhabitants, though the mines, in which it was hid, 

 had never been worked — they would turn fiercely 

 upon us and maintain, that the people of whom we 

 spoke were incapable of being educated. If we 

 further suggested that the experiment had never 

 been fairly tried, they flatly denied the fact, and 

 declared there was nothing in the laws which pre- 

 vented a native from obtaining the same know- 

 ledge, wealth, and power as a Spaniard. But this 

 assertion is not to the purpose : for whatever the 

 laws may have been, we know well what the 

 actual practice was ; and even where exceptions 

 occurred, the argument of the Spaniards was not 

 strengthened. Whenever a native did rise to 

 wealth or consequence, he became, from that 

 instant, virtually a Spaniard ; and derived his 

 riches by means of monopolies, at the expense of 

 the country ; and as he obtained power, solely by 

 becoming a servant of the government, he merely 

 assisted in oppressing his countrymen, without 

 the possibility of serving them. 



Much, however, in fairness, is to be said in 

 excuse for the sinking race of Spaniards in those 

 countries. They undoubtedly were far better 

 informed men, more industrious, and more highly 

 bred, than the natives, taken generally, at the 

 period of our visit. As merchants they were 

 active, enterprising, and honourable in all their 

 dealings. It was only on the national question 

 between them and the natives that they were 

 illiberal. Towards those with whom they were 

 acquainted personally, or with whom they had 

 business to transact, they were always fair and 

 reasonable. They were much less tainted with 

 bigotry than the natives ; and they were men of 

 pleasing conversation and manners, and habitually 

 obliging ; and when not pressed by immediate 



danger and difficulties, particularly so to strangers. 

 Notwithstanding their habitual jealousy, their pre- 

 judices never interfered with their cordial hospi- 

 tality, and even generosity to all foreigners, who 

 treated them with frankness and confidence. 



A Don, it is well known, is the most stately of 

 mortals, to those who behave to him with hauteur 

 or reserve ; but to such persons as really confide 

 in him, and treat him, not precisely in a familiar 

 manner, but in what they term " un modo cor- 

 riente," he becomes as cordial and open as any 

 man. The above Spanish phrase describes the 

 manners of a man who, without departing from 

 his own natural character, is desirous of pleasing, 

 and willing to take all things as he finds them, 

 and in good part. 



The judgment which men form of national ques- 

 tions is often irresistibly influenced by the feelings 

 of private friendship, which they bear to a few of 

 the individuals of that nation ; and although I 

 have said nothing of the Spaniards, which is not 

 perfectly notorious to all the world ; and which 

 no liberal Spaniard that I have met with has 

 attempted to deny, I feel considerable remorse 

 for using such ungracious terms, however just, in 

 speaking of a class of society, to very many of 

 whom I am indebted for much disinterested kind- 

 ness, and for whom I shall always retain the sin- 

 cerest esteem and respect. 



Persons removed, as in England, to a great dis- 

 tance from the scene, are too apt to err on the 

 other side ; and to overlook altogether the suffer- 

 ings of men who, taken individually, deserve no 

 such hard fate as that which has lately befallen 

 the Spaniards. We forget that whatever the na- 

 tional injustice may have been with which the 

 colonies have been administered, the existing 

 Spanish members of the society in America came 

 honestly by their possessions and privileges. We 

 make no allowance for their personal worth and 

 claims, but see without regret the property right- 

 fully possessed by a whole class of deserving per- 

 sons, rudely transferred to other hands ; who take 

 advantage of the times, to seize on it under the 

 pretence of an abstract right. Sometimes too, in 

 no very charitable spirit, we permit ourselves to 

 derive a kind of ungenerous satisfaction, when we 

 think of the mortification and sorrow with which 

 the ruined Spaniards have been thus rudely ex- 

 pelled from America, — as if it were just, suddenly 

 to visit the accumulated errors of three centuries 

 on the heads of the last, and perhaps the least 

 offending generation. 



A personal acquaintance, as I have said, with a 

 few of the suffering individuals, softens down these 

 illiberal sentiments in a wonderful degree, and 

 begets a more considerate and charitable way of 

 thinking. This kindly feeling towards the mem- 

 bers of the sinking party, which in no degree blinds 

 the judgment to the true merits of the great ques- 

 tion of independence, is perhaps the chief satisfac- 

 tion, though it be a melancholy one, which results 

 from seeing things with one's own eyes, and on 

 the spot ; instead of viewing them at a distance, 

 and through a medium wilfully coloured by in- 

 terest, prejudice, and passion. 



