Philip the
Second, retained its vigor in the Mexican republic. The fifty years of
civil war under which she had languished was due to the bigoted system
which was the legacy of monarchy, just as here the inheritance of
slavery kept alive political strife, and culminated in civil war. As
with us there could be no quiet but through the end of slavery, so in
Mexico there could be no prosperity until the crushing tyranny of
intolerance should cease. The party of slavery in the United States
sent their emissaries to Europe to solicit aid; and so did the party of
the church in Mexico, as organized by the old Spanish council of the
Indies, but with a different result. Just as the Republican party had
made an end of the rebellion, and was establishing the best government
ever known in that region, and giving promise to the nation of order,
peace, and prosperity, word was brought us, in the moment of our
deepest affliction, that the French Emperor, moved by a desire to erect
in North America a buttress for imperialism, would transform the
republic of Mexico into a secundo-geniture for the house of Hapsburg.
America might complain; she could not then interpose, and delay seemed
justifiable. It was seen that Mexico could not, with all its wealth of
land, compete in cereal products with our northwest, nor in tropical
products with Cuba, nor could it, under a disputed dynasty, attract
capital, or create public works, or develop mines, or borrow money; so
that the imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to
recognise the wisdom of the policy of the republic by adopting it,
could prove only an unremunerating drain on the French treasury for the
support of an Austrian adventurer.

Meantime a new series of momentous questions grows up, and forces
itself on the consideration of the thoughtful. Republicanism has
learned how to introduce into its constitution every element of order,
as well as every element of freedom; but thus far the continuity of its
government has seemed to depend on the continuity of elections. It is
now to be considered how perpetuity is to be secured against foreign
occupation. The successor of Charles the First of England dated his
reign from the death of his father; the Bourbons, coming back after a
long series of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who became king was
the eighteenth of that name. The present Emperor of the French,
disdaining a title from election alone, calls himself Napoleon the
Thi