432 



CHARACTER OF SANTA ANNA. 



he had become so habitually despotic that when he left the camp 

 for the cabinet he still blent the imperious General with the intriguing 

 President. He seemed to cherish the idea that his country could 

 not be virtuously governed. Ambitious, and avaricious, he sought 

 for power not only to gratify his individual lust of personal glory, 

 but as a means of enriching himself and purchasing the instruments 

 who might sustain his authority. Accordingly, he rarely distin- 

 guished the public treasure from his private funds. Soldier as he 

 was by profession, he was slightly skilled in the duties of a com- 

 mander in the field, and never won a great battle except through 

 the blunders of his opponents. He was a systematic revolutionist; 

 a manager of men ; an astute intriguer ; — and, personally timid, he 

 seldom meditated an advance without planning a retreat. Covetous 

 as a miser, he nevertheless, delighted to watch the mean combat 

 between fowls upon whose prowess he had staked his thousands. 

 An agriculturist with vast landed possessions, his chief rural plea- 

 sure was in training these birds for the brutal battle of the pit. 

 Loving money insatiably, he leaned with the eagerness of a gam- 

 bler over the table where those who knew how to propitiate his 

 greediness learned the graceful art of losing judiciously. Sensual 

 by constitution, he valued woman only as the minister of his plea- 

 sures. The gentlest being imaginable in tone, address, and de- 

 meanor to foreigners or his equals, he was oppressively haughty to 

 his inferiors, unless they were necessary to his purposes or not ab- 

 solutely in his power. The correspondence and public papers 

 which were either written or dictated by him, fully displayed the 

 sophistry by which he changed defeats into victories or converted 

 criminal faults into philanthropy. Gifted with an extraordinary 

 power of expression, he used his splendid language to impose by 

 sonorous periods, upon the credulity or fancy of his people. No 

 one excelled him in ingenuity, eloquence, bombast, gasconade or 

 dialectic skill. When at the head of power, he lived constantly in 

 a gorgeous military pageant; and, a perfect master of dramatic 

 effect upon the excitable masses of his countrymen, he forgot the 

 exhumation of the dishonored bones of Cortez to superintend the 

 majestic interment of the limb he had lost at Vera Cruz. 1 



It will easily be understood how such a man, in the revolutionary 

 times of Mexico, became neither the Cromwell nor the Washington 

 of his country. The great talent which he unquestionably pos- 

 sessed, taught him that it was easier to deal corruptly with corrup- 

 tions than to rise to the dignity of a loyal reformer. He and his 

 1 See page 91, vol. 1, and Mexico as it was and as it is, p 207. 



