of vast importance to us. England acts the part of an editor for the United States. She collects the news, the literature, the progressive inventions, and the genius of the old world, with unparalleled activity;— and we are always, at farthest, but twelve days behind her in diffusing these results among the seventeen millions of our own people. But it may be feared, that it will be long before Mexico imitates our example. Spain is not an England, in intellectual energy or advancement; and the day has not yet arrived in Mexico when a work in two volumes can be printed, bound, and distributed to her chief cities within twenty-four hours after its reception from Europe.
I am afraid the tendency of our sister Republic is too much toward the opposite extreme. She has not disenthralled herself from the Spanish bigotry which inculcated the idea that a nation must do all for herself, without a commercial marine of her own to carry on a well-regulated commerce. This seems to me to be a churlish policy, and is as likely to make boors of the people who practice it, as seclusion is calculated to make ascetics of those who refuse to mingle with the world, and improve their spirits by a free interchange of opinions and feelings. It is well to live where you feel the beatings of the great pulse of society; and it is time that man should remember he is not a mere machine, whose account with time is a balance-sheet between such productive manual powers as God has given him, and certain fearful columns of dollars and cents.
In the summary I have endeavored to present you, of the Mexican character, I must not be charged with inconsistency by those who think I am contradicting what I have previously stated, either about superstitious customs, or the vices that consign so many to the prison, and make others so reckless of life and fortune. These are evils begotten by the times and want of resources. At present, I treat neither of political nor social gamblers; neither of female frailties, nor that crafty duplicity which leads to high places in the state; neither of genteel vagrancy, nor the outcast lepéros and ignorant Indians who form so large a portion of the population of the country. All these are numerous enough and bad enough. But it has been my task—amid the desolation and ruin of the country—amid the dust and ashes to which a great nation has been reduced by civil war—to seek for some living embers, and to discover sufticient elements of a sound and healthful society, from which the regeneration of the country may be expected. With domestic virtue, genius, and patriotism, no people need despair; and it must be the prayer of every republican that enough of these still remain in Mexico to reconstruct their government and their society.
I will not venture, however, upon any conjectures in regard to these matters, until I speak of the political prospects of the country.
