es troops of
slaves. They constituted themselves arbitrarily creditors of the Indians
by forcing them to buy, at unreasonable prices, horses, mules, and
clothing. The Indians, never being able to pay, were forced to work for
them, and this obligation to work, or, to speak more clearly, this
servitude, once contracted, was easily made perpetual." Here, then, we
have in Colonial Mexico, at the foundation of the State, the Indian,
whom oppression had made but half a man.

Just above them were the half-bloods. These were not slaves. They were
not serfs. They were not considered to be children of a larger growth.
It was expressly said of them that they were "rational people." But they
had burdens of their own. Having little social position and less
education, incapable by nature of that sullen patience which kept the
Indian from chafing under his yoke, they were both more unhappy and more
demoralized. The crimes against property, the robberies on the highway,
could for the most part be traced to the half-breeds. "Are there any
robbers on this route?" asked Baron Deffandis, as he travelled in the
North of Mexico. "Oh, no!" was the answer; "you have nothing to fear; in
this part of the country there are no rational people,"--the speaker
remaining all unconscious of the bitter satire which was hidden in his
words.

Above the half-bloods were the Creoles, the children of white parents
and born in the Colony. Even they were doomed to feel the sting of
inferiority. They had no real political liberty, and no place in the
State. No royal trust was ever committed to them. The places of public
emolument were closed against them. All were reserved for Spaniards,
born in Spain. Of fifty-six Mexican viceroys but one was a Creole, and
he a Creole of Peru. It is the boast of a Frenchman, that in his
country, in its most despotic days, the people have always had their
songs, and that their writers have dared to breathe forth their
maledictions upon the oppression which has loaded them with exactions.
But in Spain and her colonies the Inquisition weighed heavily upon free
speech, and enforced upon all the higher subjects of human thought a
silence like the grave. The Creole scarcely knew that there was any
world beyond his horizon, or that there could be a better than his empty
and barren life; or if he did know more, he must keep that knowledge in
the solitude of his own breast. All that the Spaniard vouchsafed to him
was the liberty to a