chieve wealth, which opened to him no career of
usefulness and distinction. At most, he loaded himself with cheap
decorations, to which there was no answering position of responsibility.
"One is surprised," says a tourist, "to see all the traders turned into
colonels and captains, and to find officers of the militia in full
uniform, and decorated with the badge of the order of Charles III.,
seated in their shops, weighing out sugar, coffee, and vanilla." But as
for any real distinction, the Creole had none. These empty titles
sufficed to separate him in feeling yet more from the great mass of his
countrymen, but they did not satisfy those aspirations for real dignity
and freedom which cannot quite die out in any breast.

We see, then, what a fatal legacy the mother-country left to her
rebellious child: four castes,--the Spaniard, hated by all; the Creole,
proud, hospitable, and brave, but by his very training incapable of
persistent energy; the half-breed, wild and untamable, a natural brigand
and guerrilla; and the Indian, subdued, sad, and patient, yet with a
drop of the fierce and cruel blood of his Aztec progenitor coursing in
his veins.

The first act in the drama of the Mexican Revolution showed how great an
obstacle to national unity this sentiment of caste was. When the priest
Hidalgo in the year 1810 raised the standard of rebellion, though the
Creole heart was throbbing almost to bursting with the desire for
freedom, yet the Creole population nearly in a body sided with the
Government. Do you ask why? The answer is simple. Hidalgo's followers
were Indians. And all through that prolonged struggle of ten years under
Morelos, Vittoria, Teran, and countless other partisan leaders, even to
that hour when the rebellion was extinguished in its own blood, it was
the Creole who stood between the Spaniard and destruction, and who,
through his fear and jealousy of the native races, was the accomplice in
binding heavier chains on his own limbs. When in 1820 the revolt passed
out of the hand of the Indian into that of the native white, the
struggle was over. The hundred thousand foreigners were impotent, when
they stood alone.

We do not say that this jealousy and dislike have not been greatly
modified by the lapse of years and by the endurance of common
sufferings. No doubt there has been a great improvement. There would be
small hope for the country, if it were not so. But these feelings have
not by any means been alt