CUPIDITY OF THE VICEROYS.

145

cepting that of viceroy. Yet in practice the creoles were totally excluded from any participation in the government. Every situation in the gift of the crown, from that of viceroy down to the lowest revenue officer, was bestowed upon a European, and for many years before the revolution, no instance is afforded in which the door of promotion was opened to a native, into either the church, the army, or the law. A class of men was thus disseminated throughout the country distinct from the natives in feelings, habits, and interest, who looked upon themselves as members of a privileged caste, owing all to Spain, and exclusively devoted to her. They had in their hands all the revenues of the country, and their chief study was how to rob Mexico of the greatest capital possible. They went thither to reside for a time, and they hastened to return, in order to deposit under the paternal roof the fruits of their robbery. The viceroys set a splendid example of this cupidity. With a salary fixed at sixty thousand dollars, they found means to disburse two or three times that amount yearly, and return to Spain, after some years of vice-regal life, with several millions of economical dollars. They monopolized to themselves the king's right to dispose of mercury, they sold to the creoles the right to assume empty titles, and to the merchants of Mexico and Vera Cruz the more substantial rights to import prohibited foreign articles into the country. Sometimes the viceroys shared in the profits of the contraband trade without incurring any of the risk. The good understanding always maintained between the Spaniards in the country, rendered it impossible for a Mexican to enter into competition with them in commerce, and European hands held the whole trade of the country. All functionaries, great and small, went to the greatest limits in plundering the people on one hand, and the king on the other, and the business of office holding was so good, that many lived excellently well, who received no legal compensation whatever for their services. In fact, candidates for merely honorary offices were numerous, and sometimes they paid high prices for a title which gave them the privilege of robbing Mexico.

The complaints of the unfortunate people were fruitless against the combination of Spaniards. The feeling of clanship among the latter became at last a passion, to which even the natural feelings were sacrificed. The son, born of a creole mother, was considered inferior to the Castilian clerk, for whom the hand of the daughter of the family was reserved, with a large portion of the wealth; and a Spanish father, when irritated at his child's misdemeanours, would call bin "creole," the formula of the most profound contempt it was possible for him to express. A proof of the extent of this evil is clearly seen in the violence of the reaction after the revolution, when the name

of Spaniard entailed on its possessor a full title to every kind of proscription.

PAIN, though vigilant in all that concerned her financial interests, suffered them to be so totally mismanaged, that from Mexico, where the official revenue was stated at twenty millions of dollars, she received only six millions annually, the rest being swallowed up in expenses in the New World. Every attempt to reform these matters was made, by adding new laws, which merely complicated the system. Meanwhile, the Mexican was kept in total ignorance, and taught to believe his own situation preferable to that of all mankind, because he belonged to a nation superior in power and dignity to the rest of the world.

The principal causes of the Revolution, however, were the restrictions with which commerce and industry were fettered. The preference given to the Spaniards in public offices did not act directly upon the people, who seldom aspired to govern. But the monopoly, supported by the authorities of Spain and Mexico, bore heavily upon them. The full amount of the injustice was made visible to them day by day, as they were called upon to pay with an equal weight of precious metals for those European articles in general use, and above all, for those which their own countrymen would have produced so cheaply and abundantly, if they had not been prohibited. While Spain undertook to supply every market of her colonies, it is notorious that she herself produced scarcely any thing. She was in reality merely a merchant dealing out to her colonies the productions of industrious Europe, which reaped all the actual benefit resulting from the discovery of the transatlantic sources of wealth.

Such is a faint outline of the miserable system by which Spain governed all her colonies for three centuries. It was a system which could not endure long, when the power to enforce it was not retained. It is an immutable law of human affairs, that every system where the advantages are not reciprocal, where the governed do not derive benefit as well as the governors, should fall with the power which has established it. Such was the case in Mexico. The events which occurred in Europe in the beginning of the nineteenth century, developed in the minds of the Mexicans ideas of independence which had never before been popular enough to be translated even into words, but which were now speedily to develop themselves in actions. The French revolution, upturning the whole system of European despotism, diffused somewhat of its spirit into the benighted provinces of Spanish America, and caused the promulgation of sen

timents among the people, which otherwise would have remained the favourite theme of a few philosophers, who might, in the silence of the closet, arrange an ideal drama of the revolution, but who would recoil in horror from the very thought of putting it intc

action.

It is the misfortune of the people of Mexico, that their condition under the Spaniards was such as to cut them off from all means of in.provement in the political science. To the sister republic of the United States, political intelligence, and a keen foresight of coming oppression, shed a clear light upon the struggle for national independence; but in Mexico it was the instinctive resistance to intolerable oppression, borne for centuries by the country, which nerved the arm of the patriot; and when liberated from the foreign oppressor, the unfortunate Mexican was still to be subject to all the horrors of domestic military despotism, which substituted perpetual convulsions and civil feuds, for the previous dead calm of unmitigated despotism.

HE intelligent observer, Humboldt, remarks that in 1803, the great majority of the people of Mexico were indifferent to political rights, and not likely to join in any effort to acquire them. It did not escape his close scrutiny, however, that the higher clases of the creoles were irritated by the political insignificance to which they were condemned, and that they regarded the mother country with sullen hatred, and her once formidable

resources with contempt. These feelings formed the germ of the revolution, and favourable circumstances soon called them into action. At the commencement of 1808, the government of Mexico was intrusted to Don Jose Iturrigaray, and the vice regal authority seemed to be as firmly established as at any former period. The country was tranquil, the people were occupied in their regular pur. suits, and there could be detected nothing in the general calmn to indicate the approaching tempest.

IMPRISONMENT OF THE VICEROY.

149

The agitation commenced on the receipt of the news of the overthrow of the king of Spain by the Emperor Napoleon. The viceroy communicated the intelligence to the government gazette; but singularly enough added no comments to it concerning his future movements. In a few days, however, he became convinced of the error he had committed in not giving a direction to men's thoughts upon such startling information. He attempted to remedy it by a proclamation, soliciting the support of the people, and announcing his determination to preserve, in all emergencies, his fidelity to his and their sovereign. The people received his publication with acclamations, rejoicing greatly in the fact that they had been considered more than ciphers for once, than in the viceroy's loyalty. A kindly feeling sprung up between Iturrigaray and the people, who poured in upon him from every quarter, through their ayuntamientos, the most loyal addresses. A new feeling had been awakened, however, which very soon displayed itself. The ayuntamiento of the capital proposed the creation of a junta, in imitation of the mother country, and the convocation of a national Mexican assembly, composed of deputies from the different provinces.

The viceroy was not inimical to the proposition, but the Audiencia protested against it as opposed both to the privileges of the crown and of the Europeans, and the dispute between that body and the governor ran high, it was finally ended by a band of Europeans in the service of the Audiencia, who surprised the viceroy in his palace in the night, September 15th, and carried him to prison. The Audiencia justified the measure by proclaiming Iturrigaray to the lower classes as a heretic, and formed juntas of public security, and organized armed bands of Spaniards, who under the curious title of patriots, watched zealously the conduct of all who were suspected of being favourable to the imprisoned viceroy. Many persons were arrested, and banished or imprisoned, and the vice-regal authority was confided for the time to the archbishop Lizana. The moderate disposition of this prelate, however, did not suit the fiercer tempers of his coadjutors, and he was replaced in 1809, by the Audiencia, to whom the supreme authority was confided by the central junta of Spain. The feeling of opposition was spreading throughout the country rapidly, and the arrogance and violence of the Audiencia soon brought matters to a crisis. Its character may be fairly esti mated from that of one of its principal members, the oidor Bataller, who was wont to say that "while a Manchego mule, or a Castilian cobbler remained in the peninsula, he had a right to govern the Americans." Every where a most impatient desire to shake off the Spanish yoke began to be manifested, and the authorities in vain