154 GARROTTE MEXICAN OPINIONS. 



Robbery, . . 



Prostitution, adultry, bigamy, sodomy and incest, 



Quarreling, wounding, . £ . 



Rioting and bearing arms, .... 



Homicide and attempt at ditto, and robbery and 

 homicide, ....... 



Rape and incontinence, ..... 



Forgery, ........ 



Gambling, . . .... 



Total, 

 High grades of crime, 

 Misdemeanors, 



Total, 



Men. 



Women. 



Total. 



1.500 



470 



1970 



312 



179 



491 



2,129 



1,140 



3,233 



'612 



'444 



1,056 



70 



17 



87 



00 



21 



86 



f 



1 

 1 



0 



3 



0 



3 







6934 



6934 







1927 







8861 







$4,121 were expended for salaries in the Acordada; and $30,232 

 for the maintenance of .the prisoners. It should be stated, moreover 

 that a large number of the above criminals w r ere committed and 

 punished for throwing vitriol on the dress and faces of persons in 

 the street; — that 113 dead bodies were found; — 894 individuals 

 sent to hospitals ; and 17 executed by the garrotte. The culprit 

 who is sentenced to this mode of expiating his crime is seated in a 

 chair on the scaffold, whilst his neck is embraced by an iron collar 

 which may be contracted by a screw. A sudden and rapid turn of 

 the lever drives a sharp point through the spinal marrow at the mo- 

 ment that the band closes around the throat and strangles the victim. 



Note. — In confirmation of all we have said in this chapter in regard to the ad- 

 ministration and condition of law in Mexico, and in relation to the army, we refer 

 to an able pamphlet published in that country, in 1848, entitled " Consider aciones sobre 

 la Situation Politica y Social de la Republica Mejicanaen el ano 1847, " written, we 

 understand, by Don Francisco Lerdo. It presents a dark picture of the country at 

 that epoch ; but the author's purpose was to unmask the social and political diseases 

 of his country, and his patriotic task was the more needed -because that country was 

 on the brink of ruin from war. 



It is to be especially noted with commendation that the Mexicans have recently 

 become the severest critics not only of their institutions but. of themselves. The 

 miserable, boasting spirit, — the taste for grandiloquent proclamations, — the in- 

 discriminate laudation of Mexican virtue, talent, science, honor, valor, and justice, 

 which filled the papers and pamphlets of the nation, but which were never sustained 

 when the Mexicans came in contact either with highly cultivated foreigners or 

 were opposed by foreign arms, have all been greatly qualified since the war. The 

 combined lessons of her unsparing but truthful satirists and of her invading ene- 

 mies, will not be lost on a people really sensible and sensitive, though bewildered 

 for more than a quarter of a century during which bombast served for glory or con- 

 solation when anarchy was not altogether triumphant. In confirmation of this 

 growing spirit of self-examination with a view r to national reform, we would also 

 refer to the discreet and able memoir of Don Luis G. Cuevas, minister of foreign 

 and domestic relations, read by him before the Chamber of Deputies, on the 5th of 

 January, 1849. 



