DIVISIONS OF WHITES WANT OF HOMOGENEOUSNESS. 159 



soul without appeal, and grasping the purse, it will be at once seen 

 what a powerful element of influence such an institution must be- 

 come when directed by a single head. If the masses would prey 

 upon the church, it was the policy of the church to support the 

 army ; if the people desired to destroy the army, it was the interest 

 of the army to support a church which could control by con- 

 science or bribe by money the miscalled representatives of the peo- 

 ple. 1 With force and superstition, thus welded together by in- 

 terest, the representative system can expect but little favor from 

 these two important divisions of the white race. 



Is there hopeful reliance, then, upon another power which is 

 controlled by a portion of the educated whites? The Liberty of the 

 Press, in Mexico has disappointed its warmest advocates. An in- 

 strument which should ever be used for the enlightenment of the 

 multitude has been employed only to demoralize and deceive it. 

 Instead of attacking bravely all abuses of administration and all 

 international prejudices, or weaknesses; instead of holding the ex- 

 ecutive departments to strict accountability before the chambers 

 and the people ; instead of displaying frankly the vital interests 

 and materials of social reorganization, and thus contributing to the 

 common prosperity and peace of the country, the periodical press 

 of Mexico, with few honorable exceptions, has fostered the meanest 

 passions and hatreds of the ignorant masses and has betrayed pub- 

 lic opinion by trafficking with or truckling to the men or the classes 

 who live by public abuses and disorder. 2 Instead of checking and 

 thwarting the interference of the church in civil affairs, it has stood 

 mute or appalled before the ecclesiastical power. If there is no re- 

 liance, therefore, on the press, what available trust may be reposed 

 in the pure, civil patriots, men of letters, professional characters, 

 merchants and proprietors ? The slender numbers of this class, 

 compared with the army, church, Empleados or government em- 

 ployees, and intriguing civilians connected either with the state in 

 its various departments of finance, or with the press, at once de- 

 prive it of equality in influence. In all the turns of fortune in 

 Mexico, these men have, hitherto, never been able to command the 

 country for any length of time so as to give a permanent beneficial 

 direction to public affairs, and we may, therefore, readily agree with 

 Lerdo in believing that his country possesses no elements of na- 

 tionality. He might have gone further in his analysis, and declared 



1 Lerdo, Consideraciones, p. 46, 47. 



y Lerdo 43. — Cuevas's memoir of 1849, as Mexican Minister of Foreign and 

 Domestic relations, p. 29 of American translation. 



