comes in--under Sir John--to light labour,
much schoolmaster and chaplain, and the expectation of a
ticket-of-leave when a fraction of his time is expired. All at once Sir
James supersedes Sir John, and with him comes in a regime of hard work,
short rations, and the black hole. If he had been "in" a month sooner,
he would have been "out" now with those more fortunate criminals, his
late companions.

Things ought not to be so in England, but we need hardly wonder at
their being still worse in Mexico in this respect as in all others.
There have been twenty changes of government in ten years, and
sometimes extreme severity has been the rule, which may change at a
day's notice into the extreme of mildness. In Santa Ana's time the
utmost rigour of the law prevailed. Our friends in the Calle Seminario,
as they came back from their morning's ride in the Paseo, had to pass
through the great square; and used to see there, day after day, pairs
of garotted malefactors sitting bolt upright in the high wooden chairs
they had just been executed in, with a frightful calm look on their
dead faces.

For the last year or so all this had ceased, and there had scarcely
been an execution. It seems that one principal reason of this lenity is
that the government is too weak to support its judges; and that the
ministers of justice are actually intimidated by threats mysteriously
conveyed to witnesses and authorities, that, if such or such a criminal
is executed, his friends have sworn to avenge his death, and are on the
look-out, every man with his knife ready. To political offences the
same mercy is extended. In the early times of the war of independence,
and for years afterwards, when one leader caught an officer on the
other side, he had him tried by a drum-head court-martial, and shot.
Since then it has come to be better understood that civil war is waged
for the benefit of individuals who wish for their turn of power and
their pull at the public purse; and the successful leader spares his
opponent, not caring to establish a precedent which might prove so very
inconvenient to himself.

We were taken to see the garotte by the President, who took it out of
its little mahogany case, into which it was fitted like any other
surgical instrument. We noticed that it was rusty, and indeed it had
not been used for many months. It is not worth while to describe it.

Mexican law well administered is bad enough, not essentially unjust,
but hampere