residence in the Republic, to receive, in another world, the penalty of their unbelief in this. What, then, was to be done with the bodies? He saw but four modes of disposing of them; namely, to bury, burn, eat, or export them. To the first, his Reverend colleagues seemed to object: the second, might prove inconvenient from the scarcity of fuel: in the third, he, for one, must decline any participation; and as to the fourth, dead heretics not being included amongst the exportable commodities mentioned in the Tariff, he feared that such an innovation might seriously embarrass the custom-house officers upon the coast. He should, therefore, upon the whole, incline for burial, as amongst four serious evils it appeared to him to be the least."
The speech, of which the above is a literal translation, put an end to any farther discussion, and the article was carried by a large majority. But the fact of such a question having been mooted at all in one of the chambers of the Supreme Congress, sufficiently indicates how little was to be expected from the lower orders, when even the more enlightened were not ashamed to acknowledge opinions so much at variance with the liberal institutions of the State, and the freedom of intercourse which they professed to court.
The beauty of the climate of Mexico has, I think, been a good deal overrated. It is true that the Tableland is exempt from those diseases which prove so fatal to foreigners upon the Eastern and Western
