Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/743

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MEXICO IN 1827.
723

the establishment of a branch lodge in the capital of New Spain. Without any disparagement to its members, of whom many are both useful and distinguished men, I may say that the largest proportion of the Affiliés of this society consisted of the novi homines of the Revolution. They are the ultra Federalists, or democrats of Mexico, and possess the most violent hostility to Spain, and the Spanish residents; whom the Escoceces have uniformly protected, both as conceiving them to have lost the power of injuring the country, and because, from the large amount of the capital still remaining in their hands, they think that their banishment must diminish the resources, and retard the progress of the Republic.

Having pointed out the characteristics of the two parties, it is neither my wish, nor my intention, to animadvert upon the manner in which the contest between them has been carried on. In a country just emerging from a great political crisis, there must ever be a bitterness of feeling on political questions, which older nations can hardly comprehend; although, a century ago, our own annals might have furnished a counterpart to its violence. In Mexico this feeling has been carried very far indeed. The Yorkinos, as new men, struggling to dispossess their adversaries of that power, which is the real object of both, were undoubtedly the assailants; but acrimony has not been wanting on the other side, and the personalities in which, for two years, the newspapers of the two parties have