leave me no room to doubt the sincerity of your generous words of welcome. The scene seems to me like one of those which awaken momentary inspiration. I am on the steps of the Aztec Pyramid, which is one of the most stupendous altars of human sacrifice that was ever erected to propitiate the Deity, in the ages when he was universally understood to be a God of Vengeance. Around me lies that magnificent plain where an imperial savage throne was brought down to the dust, by the just revenge of an oppressed aboriginal Republic. I am surrounded by Christian churches and altars which tell how foreign civilized states exacted eternal subjugation, and the civil bondage of a rude people, in return for conveying to them the Gospel of "Peace on earth and good will toward man."
The serious Republican aspect and deportment of the children of the Aztecs to whom I am speaking, remind me that after a long contest with ecclesiastical, monarchial, and imperial ambitions, the independence of the ancient Aztec race has been reconquered without the loss of the Christian Religion, and consolidated in a Representative Federal Republic. Witnesses of towering majesty and impressive silence, are looking down upon me; La Malinchi, bewildering because she is indistinct, and the volcanoes Popocatapetl, Ixtacihuatl and Orizaba, clad in their eternal vestments of snow, attest that nature remains unchangable, and only men, nations, and races, are subject to moral revolution.
Gentlemen and Citizens: the circumstance that I am here, not as an enemy, but as a friend; a friend of the town of Cholula, a friend of the State of Puebla, a friend of the Republic of Mexico, enables me to study Mexico, her country and people, more carefully, and I trust to understand them better. From this place at once so sacred and so imposing, I must take leave to say to all states and nations, that Mexico neither needs, nor desires foreign protection, that she is capable of independence and self government, and susceptible of friendship; but that in her case as in all others, those who would enjoy her friendship must offer her on their part a friendship, which, though it may not be benevolent, must at least be sincere and disinterested.
