2*23 
divisions into casts, their language, and their mo- 
nastic despotism. In the country of Anahuac the 
sanguinary rites of Huitzilopochtii were estab- 
lished in proportion as the Mexican empire swal- 
lowed up all the neighbouring states. The great- 
ness of this empire was founded on an intimate 
alliance of the class of the priesthood with the 
nobility destined to the trade of arms. The high 
priest, teoteuctli (divine Lord) was generally a 
prince of the royal blood ; and no war could be 
undertaken without his permission. The priests 
even Went to combat, and were raised to the 
first dignities in the army * ; their influence be- 
came thereby as extensive as that of the Roman 
patricians, who had the exclusive right of augury, 
and in which a celebrated writer “f* has seemed 
to recognize traces of a political institution of 
the Hindoos, 
Tn Mexico, where the number and the power 
of the priests ( teopixquis) and the monks ( tlama- 
cazques) MVQVQ almost as great as they are at 
present in Thibet and Japan, every thing which 
was the effect of religious fanaticism would have 
been changed but very slowly. History proves, 
that the barbarous custom of human sacrifices 
* Peintures hierogb'phiques du Recueil de Mendoza. 
Thevenot, vol. 4, fol. 57. 
f Sehlegel, Weisheit der Indier, s. 100, 
