POWER OF THE PRESIDENT 345 
Qualifications, property, and the intrenchments of power, fortify him 
on every side. He is very distant from the people. The four millions 
of Mexican Indians, (scarcely one of whom ever had an annual income 
of two hundred dollars in his life,) must always be unrepresented in the 
Government. No hope is proposed to them of advancement or regeneration ; 
while the Chief Magistrate, himself, is surrounded by a complicated ma- 
chine, that wants every element of democratic simplicity, and possesses 
a thousand inlets to corruption and mismanagement. . If it operates well, it 
secures strong central authority. If it operates badly, it must break to 
pieces like some cumbrous engine destroyed by the confusion and multi- 
plicity of its forces. 
In either event, the President may deem himself safe. If the Bases 
succeed in giving peace, progress, and prosperity to Mexico, he will have 
the honor of the movement. But if he finds that they are not efficacious, 
or are likely to injure his schemes, it will be a task neither of difficulty nor 
danger, in so complicated a maze, to loosen some trifling screw, or throw 
some petty wheel from its axle, by which the whole must be disarranged 
without the responsibility of even its humblest engineers. 
So long as the President rules under an instrument which gives him 
complete control of the army, the power to declare war, entire patronage 
of the civil list, the right to impose fines, veto laws, and interfere with the 
judiciary ; — -he will possess an authority too great to be intrusted to any 
one individual in our day and generation. 
In the preceding sketch of Mexican Republicanism for the last twenty 
years, you will observe that I have not aimed to give an extended notice of 
the various leaders who placed themselves at the head of different move, 
ments. I have not done so, because I perceived no evidence of a progressive 
principle throughout the revolutions. The Government has generally 
been strong enough to suppress all disturbances but those that were coun- 
tenanced by Santa Anna. With a true love of freedom among a few, a 
scramble for power among others, and carelessness or supineness among 
the great body of the people, — the country has gone on blundering from 
revolution to revolution, without advancing nearer to liberty and enlight- 
enment than did the Barons of old when they sallied forth on feudal 
forays against each other. 
