NO NEW AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 



69 



the firm establishment of a manufacturing system, many persons 

 were induced to commence the cultivation of cotton. But their 

 failure was signal. It is true that in Mexico the proportion of 

 small farmers and rural tenants is small, and that the great majority 

 of the owners of the soil are large landholders who might some- 

 times change the character of their cultivation. But these men be- 

 long to the pastoral rather than the agricultural age, and delight in 

 the easier tending of their flocks and herds. In addition to this 

 we must take into consideration the well known characteristics of 

 the southern races enervated still more by the genial climate of 

 Mexico. Those races are governed by traditions. As their fathers 

 wrought — so they work. Their antipathy to change is proverbial, 

 and it is by no means uncommon to see the spirit of an anecdote 

 related by Bazil Montague, realized every day in Mexico. 



"In a particular district of Italy," says he, "the peasants loaded 

 their panniers with vegetables on one side, and balanced the oppo- 

 site pannier by filling it with stones, and when a traveller pointed 

 out the advantages to be gained by loading both panniers with 

 vegetables, he was answered that their forefathers, from time im- 

 memorial, had so carried their produce to market; that they 

 were wise and good men, and that a stranger showed very little 

 understanding or decency who interfered in the established customs 

 of a country." Such are the difficulties to be encountered in the 

 habits and prejudices of all old nations, and the embarrassment, in 

 the present instance, would not be so much in creating a body of 

 gentlemen planters, as in finding laborers to work the plantations 

 when they had been acquired. 



Brought up as most of the Indians are, on small pieces of land, 

 or in little villages among the mountains, they find that the fruitful 

 soil produces, almost spontaneously, enough for their frugal sup- 

 port. A skin or two, together with a few yards of cotton or 

 woollen cloth, suffice, every few years, for their requisite covering. 

 The broad leaves of a plantain, or, a palm with its matted vines, 

 afford them shelter during the day, whilst a kennel on the ground, 

 keeps off the rains or night dews. And thus, a servile content- 

 ment with traditionary occupations or idleness, roots them to the 

 soil where they were born, and makes them, in fact though not in 

 name, the hereditary slaves of the estates on which their ancestors 

 have worked for centuries. These men are, of course, not to be 

 suddenly diverted from their tastes ; and the worthy persons who 

 have commenced the cultivation of cotton in suitable districts of 

 the country where the Indians are numerous and unemployed, have 



