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VICEROYAL GOVERNMENT THE PEOPLE. 



was not designed to obtain liberty, for they were already free ; but 

 it was excited and successfully pursued in order to prevent the 

 burthensome and aggressive impositions of England which would 

 have curtailed that freedom, and, reduced us to colonial depen- 

 dence as well as royal or ministerial dictation. Mexico, on the con- 

 trary, had never been free. Spain regarded the country as a mine 

 which was to be diligently wrought, and the masses of the people 

 as acclimated serfs whose services were the legitimate perquisites 

 of a court and aristocracy beyond the sea. There had been, 

 among the kings and viceroys who controled the destinies of New 

 Spain, men who were swayed by just and amiable views of colo- 

 nial government; but the majority considered Mexico as a specula- 

 tion rather than an infant colony whose progressive destiny it was 

 their duty to foster with all the care and wisdom of christian magis- 

 trates. The minor officials misruled and peculated, as we have 

 related in our introductory sketch of the viceroyal government. 

 They were all men of the hour, and, even the viceroys themselves, 

 regarded their governments on the American continent as rewards 

 for services in Europe, enabling them to secure fortunes with 

 which they returned to the Castilian court, forgetful of the Indian 

 miner and agriculturist from whose sweat their wealth was coined. 

 The Spaniard never identified himself with Mexico. His home 

 was on the other side of the Atlantic. Few of the best class 

 formed permanent establishments in the viceroyalty ; and all of 

 them were too much interested in maintaining both the state of 

 society and the castes which had been created by the conquerors, 

 to spend a thought upon the amelioration of the people. We do 

 not desire to blacken, by our commentary, the fame of a great 

 nation like that of Spain ; yet this dreary but true portrait of 

 national selfishness has been so often verified by all the colonial 

 historians of America, and especially by Pazo and Zavala, in their 

 admirable historical sketches of Castilian misrule, that we deem 

 it fair to introduce these palliations of Mexican misconduct since 

 the revolution. 1 



The people of New Spain were poor and uneducated, — the 

 aristocracy was rich, supercilious, and almost equally illiterate. It 

 was a society without a middle ground, — in which gold stood out 

 in broad relief against rags. Was such a state of barbaric semi- 

 civilization entitled or fitted to emerge at once into republicanism ? 



1 Zavala's Hist. Rev. of Mex. 2 vols.; — and Pazo's letters on the United Provinces 

 of South America. 



