nations. The colonists give, it is true, a greater expanse to their haciendas than we give in Europe, but they are always proportional to the capacities of their families. Consequently, there exists among them a kind of territorial balance, as Harrington called it in his work, Oceana, a balance that contributes to the preservation of liberty in the United States of the North. For the rest, even without this balance, it might be able to have established that liberty; because the Americans have accumulated capital, have vast commerce and arts, the poor and the rich alike finding in their country abundant means to subsist with independence.
These doctrines, whose accuracy one cannot dispute, lend substance to very profound reflections, given the data I have noted in an orderly manner regarding the state of territorial riches in the Mexican Republic. What role will more than three million individuals, summoned suddenly to enjoy the broadest rights of citizenship from the state of the most ignominious enslavement, with no real property, no knowledge of any craft or office, neither commerce nor any industry, come to play in this society in which, appearing suddenly, they can be considered the progeny of Deucalion and Pirra? How are we to judge them, so detached from the desire to improve their fate that, having in their hands the ability to exercise their political rights in the assemblies and elective magistracies, they do not take advantage of their position? More to the point: What should the conquered families do, over whom ill treatment of all kinds has been exercised for three centuries, to become incorporated by the constitutions of the country into the great national family? How have the inexpert directors of those societies been able to forget or close their eyes to what has happened in all nations? Which have been the constant movements of the radicals in England, the liberals in continental Europe, and particularly in France, that laid the foundation for their revolution of ’89 over the distribution of feudal properties? Is it perchance believed that the flight taken recently by the project of the bill of reform in England is in order to have a few more deputies or electors?
Every government has its principle of existence for which, once unsettled or distorted, another, analogous to the changes that have occurred in the country, must be substituted. The colonial system established by the Spanish government was founded: (1) On the terror produced by immediate punishment of the smallest actions that might lead to disobedience;
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that is to say, on the blindest passive obedience, without permitting the examination of what has been ordered nor by whom. (2) On the ignorance in which one must keep those inhabitants who could not learn more than what the government wanted, and only to the degree agreeable to it. (3) On religious education and, most of all, on the most despicable superstition. (4) On a Jewish isolation from all foreigners. (5) On monopoly in commerce, of territorial properties and of positions. (6) On a number of troops ready to carry out in a moment the orders of the mandarins, and who were more like gendarmes of the police than soldiers of the army, to defend the country.
After the Mexicans had secured their independence, the terror inspired by the Spanish authorities, maintained by custom passed down from fathers to sons, disappeared, and the broadest declarations of liberty and equality have been substituted. Ignorance, without having been able to disappear, has given place to a political charlatanism that takes possession of public dealings and leads the state to chaos and confusion. Popular superstition not ceasing, a large number of books have been introduced that corrupt the mores without enlightening the understanding. There is now no monopoly of commerce, positions, or territorial properties, and this item requires a long explanation.
Commerce has been opened to all foreigners, and speculators have taken out great profits, as was to be expected. Articles of merchandise conveyed by second, third, and fourth hand, passing from northern Europe to merchants in Cádiz, and from them to Veracruz in Mexico, had necessarily to arrive much more expensive, especially with no competition among the markets. In this area the fate of the country has improved a great deal, and many fewer destitute people are seen than in other times. But very few are the foreigners who, after having made great earnings, remain in the country and join with Mexican families. It appears that they see themselves in the country as in tents, ready to break camp as soon as they have concluded their business. On this point, one can expect much improvement with time. As for the monopoly of positions, it exists only among the factions that fight among themselves to attain them, but all are Mexicans. The territorial properties are among the great objects that will occupy the attention of those governments. On this, I have already said how it is enough to make known the difficult position of the directors of those towns, and I have not intended to make a treatise on insurrections. I reserve giving greater consideration
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to these ideas in my memoirs that should be published within a short time, and that I have at hand.
One of the greatest woes that will afflict those peoples for some time is that of the permanent troops, both for the useless expense they cause and because they work as organized masses under the direction of ambitious leaders, so the civil governments cannot offer resistance to them and are consequently their instruments or their victims. Ten or twelve colonels of regimental bodies and four or five generals, forming a united system, oppress the country, and, without altering the republican forms, everything proceeds under their inspirations. Foreign businessmen, who can have no other interests than their profits, which depend on the state of tranquility or slavery, favor this system to the extent they can unite with Spaniards who desire the same, and it is very common to see many liberals from Europe in Mexico enrolled in the ranks of the oppressors. This explains the mystery of why some newspapers, even those of the party of liberty in Europe, make apologies for the military governments of America. Receiving communication and news from overseas agents, and those agents always speaking in the sense of their profits and interests, it is clear that the military party must be considered most useful to their speculation.
But one must not lose sight of the principles I have set forth on the well-known facts to which I have also referred. The greatest and most dangerous errors of those who direct public affairs is not to think about the generations that will be following, nor about their advances and aspirations, and in no place is this error susceptible of easier realization than in the new states of America. From the year 1808 until 1830, that is to say, in the space of a generation, such is the change of ideas, opinions, factions and interests that has occurred, that it is enough to turn a respected and recognized form of government upside down and have seven million inhabitants pass from despotism and arbitrariness to the most liberal theories. Only the customs and habits are transmitted in all movements; actions and continuous examples have not been able to change, because how can abstract doctrines make the course of life suddenly change? Consequently we have in contradiction to the theoretical systems of established governments those powerful agents of human life, and the founders of republican forms will not be able to deny that they have only dressed, with the clothing of declarations of rights and principles, the old man, the same body or confluence of prejudices, the
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mass organized and shaped by previous institutions. What have they done to substitute usages and customs analogous to the new order of things?
There is, then, a continual clash among the doctrines that are professed, the institutions adopted, the principles established; and among the abuses sanctified, the customs that dominate, semifeudal rights that are respected; among the national sovereignty, equality of political rights, freedom of the press, popular government, and intervention of the armed force, laws of privilege, religious intolerance, and landowners of immense territories. Might the conserving principles of any social order whatsoever at least be made harmonious? If a federal system, which is what seems to me most suitable to those countries, is adopted by conviction, by rationality, by a judgment formed after profound reflection, not for that reason should the system of the neighbors of the North be copied exactly, nor, much less, literal articles from the Spanish Constitution. The height of absurdity and the absence of all good sense is the sanction of laws of privilege and privileges in a popular government. Let there be established an ecclesiastical, military, and civil aristocracy if one wants or believes it useful to the good of the country; let the republics of Genoa or Venice be imitated if it is possible; then might