wearied and the memory fails to preserve even their names,--when we
behold her the helpless victim of any power that chooses to assail
her,--when, in short, we compare the Mexico that is with the Mexico that
was to be,--we ask ourselves, What are the causes which have made so
many advantages worse than futile?--what fate has ordained that so much
sacrifice and so much blood should be lavished, and in vain? That is the
very question we seek to answer.

* * * * *

We begin with what is the true foundation of all national fortunes, the
character and social relations of the people. It is the profound remark
of a profound man, that "you can create no national spirit where no
nation is." That is at the root of Mexico's troubles. She is not in any
proper sense a nation. All her sufferings have not as yet moulded her
diverse elements into any real and efficient unity. Modern Mexico,
dating from the Conquest, was founded, not upon social unity, but upon
the widest social divergence. At one end of the scale, high up in luxury
and pride, was the Spanish Conqueror and oppressor. At the other, deep
down as degradation could go, the crushed and cowering descendant of the
native races. Between them the half-bloods, with the vices of both and
the virtues of neither. The Spaniard did all that he could to dig deep
and broad this gulf of separation between the classes, and to make it
perpetual. As if to stamp inequality in biting phrase upon men's speech,
he called the whites people with reason, the Indians people without
reason.

Look, then, first at the condition of the native races under this
Colonial authority. In the beginning, they were literally slaves, bound
to the withering toil of the mines. Then they became serfs, mere
appendages to estates. And when the progress of light swept away this
institution, and gave them a nominal freedom, still they were in the eye
of the law in a state of perpetual minority. They were simply grown-up
children. They were confined in villages, out of which they could not
go, and into which the white could not come. They were held to be
incapable of making contracts above a sum equal to five of our dollars.
The very men who were set to watch over their interests, by enticing
them into debts which they would not pay, changed their legal freedom
into a peonage, which was actual, and too often life-long, slavery. Says
Chevalier,--"These functionaries acquired for themselv