towards the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
when Mexico became dependent on the Spanish
crown. As the most productive of the Spanish
colonies it had ample attention. At first, the
natives were divided among the colonising
Spaniards in simple slavery. Las Casas made
his protest showing the effects of such a system,
and the result was, that while in the islands it
remained, in Mexico it was replaced by a system
of serfdom. Groups of families, called encomiendas,
were allotted for employment in specific
services by Spanish soldiers, lawyers, colonists
of mark, and clergy, the religious orders being,
of course, endowed with a considerable wealth
in these families of serfs. The system was
abolished by King Charles the Third of Spain,
but the root of it proved ineradicable. The
same king abolished the oppressive local mayors,
and divided the land into twelve larger districts,
each under the care of an intendant. But the
intendant was represented in each district by a
"sub-delegate," who was no improvement upon
the old-fashioned mayor. He was forbidden to
trade, because trading would tempt to oppression,
but was left to live as he could, without a
salary. Deriving all his income from fees, this
official created vexations of the people,
oppressed the poor, acted in connivance with
those who could pay him well, and thus trafficked
in justice.

At the beginning of the century, in Spanish
Mexico, Humboldt found the natives, miscalled
Indians, protected against fraud by being made
unable to contract legally for any sum above a
pound, and therefore, except their caciques or
noble?, who had been left free from the first,
unable to thrive by trading. This was a truly
Spanish notion of Protection, meant as such,
though horribly oppressive. The Indians paid
annual tribute, but they were not slaves, and,
better off than their neighbours of Peru, they
had been exempted from forced labour in the
mines. The people of mixed blood, descended
from Indians and whites, and a few from Indians
and negroes, were classed into castes and legally
degraded. They paid tribute, and, being allowed
to trade with the whites, found little reason to
respect them. These people of mixed race
in the old Spanish American colonies—the
Mestijos—are more vigorous and able than
either of the pure races, Spanish or American,
whence they proceed. So manifest is their
superior ability, that the future of what was
once Spanish America is supposed by some to
await, in course of time, their fashioning.

The Indians, or what remained of the original
people of Mexico, were forced by the forms of
Spanish protection, and disposed by nature, to
remain apart from the conquerors in villages of
their own. The caciques also, though free,
preferred to live with their own people as heads
of the villages, and to live simply, making no
dangerous display of any wealth they might
possess. Not long after the conquest they were
ahead of their conquerors in care of education,
founded a college for themselves in the
Franciscan convent of Santiago de Tlatalolco.
The first viceroy of Mexico, after Cortez,
presided at its solemn inauguration; but, the
Spaniards following a policy of degradation
against the spirited people over whom they
ruled, that college was disorganised, and the
establishment of others was prevented. At the
end of the last century a wealthy cacique of
Puebla went to Madrid, where he spent years
in vain endeavours to persuade the authorities
to establish a College for Indians in his native
city. Thus the native race was degraded while
the half-breeds were oppressed, and the Spanish
rule over Mexico was near its end when the
Bishop of Michoacan reported the true state of
things to the home government, saying, " What
attachment to the government can there be in
the Indian who is despised and degraded, who
is almost without property, and without hope
of bettering his condition? He is attached to
social life by a tie which offers to him no advantage.
Your majesty must not believe that the
fear of chastisement will alone suffice to
preserve peace in this country; there must be
other and stronger motives. If the new laws
which Spain awaits with impatience do not
regulate the positions of Indians and of coloured
people, the influence of the clergy, however
great it may be over these unfortunate
creatures, will not be able to retain them in the
submission and the respect due to their
sovereign."

The expected reforms never came. Even the
Creoles, or Spaniards of unmixed blood but born
in Mexico, had no political liberties or rights.
It was not in the nature of the Spanish government
to give even to Spain's own children such
gifts as were enjoyed in the New World by
colonists from every other land. While the
English colonists were thriving by action upon
principles of civil liberty, the colonists of Spain
were under tutelage of a country that sought to
rule absolutely by weakening and dividing those
under her sway. The several colonies of Spain
in America were also carefully isolated, lest they
might combine to break their bonds. Nothing
could be printed till it had run the gauntlet of
both civil and ecclesiastical censorship; nothing
about America might be printed without license
of the Council of the Indies. Clavigero's
inoffensive History of Mexico, written for Spain,
had to be published in Italy, translated into
Italian. If license had been got for its publication
in Spain, special permission would have
been required for the sending out of any copies
to the colonies. As for works of imagination,
they were contraband, as vain fiction and idle
tales. Ships sailing to the colonies were required
to have inscribed on their register the contents
of every book they carried. Ecclesiastical and
civil officers met every ship on its arrival, to
inspect the books. And then came the examination
by the Inquisition.

It was in the same jealous protective spirit
that the home government sought to guard itself
from all danger of local patriotism, by giving
trust and office only to Spaniards who had been
born in Spain, and placing apart, under ban of