er this rule the actual
literature of the country was sufficiently dry and barren. A bishop
writes that the deplorable condition of the Indians has produced such
sluggishness of mind and such absolute indifference and apathy, that
they have no feelings either of hope or of fear. And he predicted the
very results, which then were prophecy, but now are history.

How entire this ignorance was, when the colonial tie was sundered, we
cannot definitely determine. But we have the testimony of one who had
ample opportunity for observation, and who made the most extended
personal inquiries, that, twenty-five years afterwards, only two per
cent. of the Indians, and only twenty per cent. of the whites and
half-breeds, could read and write; and in 1856, actual statistics showed
that but one in thirty-seven attended school. When we consider that in
Massachusetts one in every five and a third of our population enjoys
school-privileges, we shall comprehend how large a portion of the youth
of Mexico are even now growing up in utter ignorance.

One of the direct results of this popular ignorance is, that the conduct
of affairs has virtually passed out of the hands of the people. To a
considerable extent, it may be affirmed that the strifes which divide
and desolate Mexico do not rise to the dignity of civil wars. They are
not so much the conflicts of a divided people as the disgraceful brawls
of ambitious demagogues and their adherents. Every traveller notes with
astonishment how little these great changes, which ought to stir to its
depths the national heart, ruffle even the surface of society,--how the
great mass sit undisturbed, while events big with importance are
transacted before their eyes,--how a few ambitious leaders, or a few
military chieftains, with their mercenary bands, are permitted to uphold
or betray, to advance or trample under foot, great principles which with
us excite every mind and arouse every heart. We believe it to be
strictly true that a large portion of the Mexican people have not enough
mental and moral activity to take an interest of any kind in these
desolating wars,--much less to exercise that repressing influence by
which the criminal ambition of the few must bow to the rights of the
many. There could not be a worse sign. Popular ignorance, therefore,
leading to popular apathy, must be put down among the influential causes
of Mexican sorrows.

* * * * *

A third cause is