in 1827, the entire expatriation of the Spanish residents has been effected by the class over whom they so long unjustly tyrannised. The Creoles are naturally acute, and have a happy aptitude for all arts and sciences, though education is much neglected amongst them. It is in Mexico, chiefly, that we meet with well-informed Creoles; but there is a remarkable contrast between the people in the interior provinces and the enlightened classes of the capital.

As the whites form the only class who possess any political importance and intellectual cultivation, they are also the only class who possess great wealth. Wealth is unhappily more unequally distributed in Mexico than in all the other Spanish colonies put together, being concentrated in the hands of a few opulent families, and successful mining-speculators.

The creoles are thus characterised by an American traveller: "Satisfied with the enjoyment of their large estates, and with the consideration which their rank and wealth confer, they seek no other distinction; they are not remarkable for their attainments, or for the strictness of their morals. The lawyers," it is added, "who, in fact, exercise much more influence over the people, rank next to the nobles. They are the younger branches of noble houses, or the sons of Europeans, and are distinguished by shrewdness and intelligence. Next in importance are the merchants and shopkeepers; for the former are not sufficiently numerous to form a separate class: they are wealthy, and might possess influence, but have hitherto taken little part in the politics of the country, most probably from the fear of losing their property. The labouring class in the cities and towns, includes all castes and colours; they are industrious and orderly, and view with interest what is passing around them; most of them can read, and in the large cities, papers and pamphlets are hawked about the street, and sold at a cheap rate. The labouring class in the country is composed, in the same manner, of different castes; they are sober, industrious, docile, ignorant, and superstitious, and may be led by their priests and masters to good or evil. Their apathy has in some measure been overcome by the long struggle for independence, in which most of them bore a part, but they are still under the influence and direction of the priests. The last class, unknown as such in a well regulated society, consists of beggars and idlers, drones that prey upon the community, and who, having nothing to lose, are always ready to swell the cry of popular ferment, or to lend their aid in imperial tyranny. The influence of this class, wherever it is numerous, upon the fate of revolutions, has always been destructive to liberty."

The manners and customs of the Mexican Spaniards, or Creoles, are different in many respects from those of the parent state; and have become much corrupted in the populous, opulent, and delicious city of Mexico. They are extremely addicted to festivals, fire-works, gambling, horse-racing cockfighting, music, dancing, and smoking cigars. All the Mexican ladies smoke tobacco in little cigars. Continually occupied in this amusement, as soon as one cigar is exhausted another is lighted; and they only cease to smoke when they eat or sleep. It may be easily conceived how much the health and complexion of a fine female are vitiated by this indecent and abominable practice. The most of the day is consumed in eating. In the morning they take chocolate; breakfast is served at nine; another breakfast at eleven; and soon after noon, they dine. The siesto, or afternoon nap, is succeeded by an afternoon launcheon, more chocolate, and a hearty supper. The Mexican ladies imitate the European fashions, and are osten

tatious of their wealth, in the quantity of their diamonds, and the size of their pearls, when at balls and festivals.

The dress of the males has undergone a similar change, and there is little difference in this respect between them and those of Old Spain. Those of the lower class, of whatever cast or colour, were all, a few years since, wrapt up in mantles, without any other dress but drawers and a little hat. There are a great number of baths at Mexico, the frequent use of which atones for the want of linen; and the climate being warm and dry renders bathing agreeable and salutary.

The other casts, as the Meztizoes, Mulatoes, Indians, and Blacks, are possessed of neither power nor property, nor education; all these, with a few exceptions, being monopolized by the whites. The Meztizoes are of a milder character than the Mulatoes. Meztizoes and Zamboes, or the fruit of European and Indian crossings, are unknown in the United States, where the whites have never mingled with the natives or copper-coloured race, nor these latter with the blacks. As few or no women accompanied the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, they were necessitated to matrimonial intercourse with the native females, and thus a race of descendants of a most anomalous description was produced. These, in a few generations, mixing with imported Africans, and with the whites, still farther increased the mixed breeds and different classes, who in process of time assumed a variety of ranks, exactly according to their greater or less affinity to the whites. The scale of society is determined exactly and rigorously according to the colour. These distinctions arising from colour operate as so many barriers to that social consolidation which is the strength of a nation, and so essential to its independence and felicity. The white classes sincerely hate each other, and both are as sincerely hated by the mixed breeds; and this mutual hatred of all the different grades of colour to one another was carefully fomented by the Spanish court, in order to preserve its own power in the country. The whole number of blacks does not much exceed 6000, and they were all fully emancipated by decree of the president of 15th September 1829.

As to the moral or intellectual faculties of the present race of Mexican Indians, it is difficult to appreciate them justly, if the long state of degradation under which they have laboured be considered. The better part of this indigenous race, from whom a greater degree of intellectual cultivation might have been expected, almost wholly perished in their disastrous struggle with European ferocity. Their temples were levelled with the ground, their priests, in whose hands were deposited all their historical, mythological, and astronomical science (for the priests observed the meridian-shades in the gnomon, and regulated the kalendar), were exterminated; and those hieroglyphical paintings, the only medium by which every kind of knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation, were all burned by the monks. The Indians thus deprived of these means of instruction enjoyed by their ancestors, were plunged in ignorance so much the deeper, as the Popish missionaries were totally ignorant of the Mexican language, and could therefore substitute no new ideas in place of the old. The present Mexican Indians are a grave, melancholic, and silent race, except when inebriated by intoxicating liquors. They have neither that mobility of sensation, gesture, or feature, nor that mental activity which distinguishes the tribes of equinoctial Africa. A Mexican Indian and a Congoese Negro are a perfect contrast. Indian gravity is par ticularly remarkable in the children, who, at four or five years old, display

much more intelligence and maturity than white children. A mysterious air is thrown by a Mexican over his most indifferent actions, and the most violent passions are never painted in his face. The Indians of Tlascala display more energy than those of Mexico; and even in their present degradation, the descendants of these republicans are still distinguished by a certain haughtiness of character, inspired by the memory of their former grandeur. The introduction of such Christianity as they received from the Spanish ecclesiastics, has produced no other change on the Indians than the mere substitution of new ceremonies for those of a religion essentially sanguinary. Dogma has not succeeded to dogma, and the natives know nothing of religion but its exterior forms. They are amused but not edified by the splendid processions, the pompous rites, and the numerous festivals of the Catholic worship; Indians masked, and adorned with small tinkling bells, perform savage dances round the altar, while a monk elevates the host. Inured to a long slavery, the Mexicans patiently bear the yoke of oppression, and only oppose to the domination of the whites a cunning, artfully veiled under the appearance of stupidity and apathy. Unable to revenge himself on his oppressors, he delights to make common cause with them in oppressing his fellow-Indians. Harassed for ages by tyranny, he wishes to tyrannize in his turn, and none exercise power with greater severity than the copper-coloured magistrates of the Indian villages, especially as they are sure of being supported by the priest, or sub-delagado. The Indians seem to possess little or no imagination; but when an Indian attains a certain stage of civilization, he displays a great facility of apprehension, a judicious mind, a natural logic, and a particular talent for metaphysical refinement. He reasons coolly and orderly, but never manifests that versatility of imagination, that sentimental glow, and that creative and animating art, which characterize the people of southern Europe. Their dancing and music partake of their natural gravity and melancholy. Their songs are terrific and mournful. Their women are possessed of more vivacity, but share that usual degree of servitude to which females are subjected among nations where civilization is in a state of infancy.

The Mexican Indians are divided into two classes, namely: the nobles or caziques, and the tributary Indians. The former, by the Spanish laws, ought to be on a level with the Castilian nobility, in point of privileges. But in their present situation this advantage is wholly illusory. The cazique is now a very different being from what he was in the days of Montezuma; and is hardly distinguishable in his dress, mode of living, and that aspect of misery which he loves to exhibit, from his humble vassal who still shows him the same distant respect which was prescribed by the ancient institutions of the Aztec hierarchy. As the oppressed love to be oppressors in their turn, the tributary Indians are more oppressed by their own caziques than by the Spaniards themselves. There still exist at Panuco two Indian communities, amounting to about 909 souls, who speak the ancient Guaztec language, and may be regarded as the sole survivors of a tribe which once numbered 100,000 souls. Very few Indians enjoy any thing like a mediocrity of fortune. In Oaxaca, Valladolid, the valley of Tolucca, and in the vicinity of La Puebla, there are several Indians who possess great wealth under an appearance of extreme poverty. "A more, mild, polite, civil race of men than the native Indians," says a recent writer, "I have not found in any country. They are at zero in ignorance, but their old and many of their present masters, are many de

grees below in ignorance, from the defect of a bad education. I have more hopes of the Indian population (who are five-sixths of the whole) than from either the descendants of the Europeans, or the mixed breed.

Languages.] Of the various languages spoken throughout New Spain, the Mexican is the chief. The grammars and dictionaries which have been published of this language show it to differ essentially from the Peruvian. The words frequently end in tl, and are besides of a surprising and unpronounceable length, resembling in this respect the languages of the North American savages, and some of the African dialects; but strongly contrasted with those of Asia, in which the most polished, as the Chinese, are monosyllabic. According to Clavigero, the Mexican tongue wants the consonants b, d, f, g, r, and s,-in this respect strictly coinciding with the Peruvian language, except that the latter, instead of the s, is said to want the z. Some of the Mexican words are sixteen syllables in length, and are from this circumstance harsh and unpleasant to the ear.

The Spanish colonists being chiefly of Andalusian descent, the Spanish language is spoken with an accent disagreeable to a Castilian ear, and is much corrupted in New Spain; an infinity of foreign expressions having been adopted, and a new meaning given to many words and phrases.

Literature.] The genius of the Catholic religion, the establishment of the inquisition, and the selfish policy of the mother-country, combined with the habits and pursuits of the colonists themselves, have so effectually cooperated to a seclusion of almost all knowledge in this country, that the colonists may be said to have vegetated like the acorn in the forest; they are but beginning to see, through the darkness of the gloom that surrounds them, the light of day. The education of the lower classes has been utterly neglected; and though instructed in some of the ritual observances of Catholicism, yet this instruction seldom goes farther than to teach them to adore the Virgin, and to make the sign of the cross; whilst in the Indian villages ignorance is carefully fostered, and the ancient idolatry frequently winked at by their caziques. The education of the higher classes has been somewhat better attended to; and in the universities there are some professors who may pass for learned. The rudiments of science only were taught in these seminaries; and these were diffused over a very narrow surface, as the possession of learning and science conferred no distinction, and led to no emolument, in a country where the simple fact of not being born in Spain was an effectual exclusion from all promotion. Such injudicious and selfish policy has long operated as a bar to all literary industry and aspiring genius. Some incipient rays of light have, however, lately appeared; and there is some reason to hope that the darkness will be gradually dispelled. The method of study has been reformed in the seminaries of Mexico; and in place of scholastic subtilties, the belles lettres and other useful studies begin to be substituted. Reading is become an article of request among the higher classes of Creoles; and a number of modern scientific institutions have been lately formed at Mexico. "Most of the people in the cities," says a recent traveller, can read and write. I would not be understood as including the leperos; but I have frequently remarked men clothed in the garb of extreme poverty, reading the gazettes in the street. Of these there are three published every other day in the week, which are sold for 12 cents a-piece; and pamphlets and loose sheets are hawked about and sold at a reasonable There are several booksellers' shops, which are but scantily sup books. The booksellers have hitherto laboured under all the dis

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liberty and distinction. As to the character and moral conduct of the clergy, various and contradictory statements have been given. A considerable reformation in morals has taken place among them since the exclusion of the regulars from filling parochial cures has been effected; and the bulk of the inferior clergy, who perform the drudgery of the office, are said to be liberal and well-informed men. The following remark of Pike concerning the inferior clergy, is worthy of notice, as it has been confirmed since by recent events:-"I scarcely saw one of them who was not in favour of a revolution. Being generally Creoles by birth, and always kept in subordinate grades, without the least shadow of probability of rising wo the superior dignities of the church, their minds have been soured to such a degree, that I am confident in asserting, that they will lead the van, whenever the standard of independence is raised in the country." This predic tion has been exactly and recently verified; for a Creole priest, named Hidalgo, a man of abilities, eloquence, and information, was the prime mover of all the disturbances that have since agitated Mexico: and though he lost his life in the attempt, his place was soon supplied by another priest named Morilos.

Romish superstition appears in all its pomp in New Spain. The churches and convents are magnificently built and richly adorned; and on high festivals, the display of gold, silver, and precious stones, is such as to exceed European conceptions. The rail round the high altar of the cathedral of Mexico is of solid silver; and there is a silver lamp, so capacious, that three men get in to clean it; while it is also enriched with lions' heads, and other ornaments in pure gold. The images of the virgin and other saints are either solid silver, or covered with gold and precious stones. The cathedral of Chihuahua is the most superb edifice in New Spain. The whole front is covered with statues of the apostles and the different saints, set in niches of the wall; and the windows, doors, &c. are ornamented with sculpture. The interior decorations are immensely rich. The cost of this building, including the decorations, was 1,500,000 dollars, or £375,000 sterling; and was defrayed by a tax of 123 per cent. on every ingot of gold or silver taken out of the neighbouring mines. "In this country," says s recent writer, "your eyes are tired and your ears stunned with the luxurious churches, convents, &c. &c., and their fatiguing music. Their gold and silver, collected by such cunning industry, may ere long atone for its nefarious mode of acquisition, by the use it will, perhaps, alone be put to. Those who at present enjoy the benefit, have lost, and are losing daily, their power over the multitude, having long lost all moral influence over the few that rule; which reduction of the power of the priests is much accelerated by the banishing the old Spaniards, who, though so lately pos sessing all the power and the greatest part of the wealth, made so great an abuse of both as to be so detested by the people, that their banishment is one of the most popular acts of the legislators, without any temptation of property; for neither those who emigrated by their own good-will, nor those that were banished for their intrigue have lost one cent of their perhaps ill-gotten wealth."

CHAP. VI.-MANUFACTURES AND COMMERCE.

MANUFACTURES have made some progress in Mexico, notwithstanding the long narrow and restrictive policy of the Spanish government: their