CHAP. VI.

THE inhabitants of New Spain are composed of people of three different races; whites, Indians, and negroes, or the several mixtures of those. The whites are either born in Old Spain, or they are Creoles; those who are native Spaniards are mostly in offices, or in trade, and have the same cha|racter and manners with the Spaniards of Europe; the same gravity of behaviour, the same natural sagacity and good sense, the same indolence, and a yet greater share of pride and stateliness; for here they look upon the being natives of Old Spain as a very honourable distinction, and are in return looked upon by the Creoles with no small share of hatred and envy. The latter have little of that firmness and patience which makes one of the finest parts of the character of the native Spaniard. They have little courage, and are universally weak and effeminate. Living as they do in a constant enervating heat, surfeited with wealth, and giving up their whole time to loitering and inactive pleasures, they have nothing bold or manly to fit them for making a figure in active life; and few or none have any taste for the satisfactions of a learned retirement. Luxurious without variety or elegance, and expensive with great parade, and little con|veniency, Page  233 their general character is no more than a grave and specious insignificance.

They are temperate at their tables and in their cups, but from idleness and constitution, their whole business is amour and intrigue; these they carry on in the old Spanish taste, by doing and saying extravagant things, by bad music, worse poetry, and excessive expences. Their ladies are little celebrated for their chastity or domestic virtues; but they are still a good deal restrained by the old-fashioned etiquette, and they exert a genius whichi is not contemptible, in combating the restrants which that lays them under.

The clergy are extremely numerous, and their wealth and influence cannot be doubted among so rich and superstitious a people. It is said, that they actually possess a fourth of the revenues of that whole kingdom; which, after all abatements, certainly amounts to several millions. And as to their numbers, it is not extravagant to say, that priests, monks, and nuns of all orders, are upwards of one fifth of all the white people, both here and in the other parts of Spanish America. But the clergy here being too ignorant in general to be able instructors by their preaching, and too loose and debauched in their own manners to in|struct by their example, the people are little the better for their numbers, wealth or influence. Many of them are no other than adventurers Page  234 from Old Spain, who without regard to their character or their vows, study nothing but how to raise a sudden fortune, by abusing the ignorance and extreme credulity of the people. A great deal of attention is paid to certain mechanical methods of devotion. Moral duties are little talked of. An ex|treme veneration for saints, lucrative to the orders they have founded, or are supposed to patronize, is strongly inculcated, and makes the general subject of their sermons, designed rather to raise a stupid admiration of their miracles, than an imitation of the sanctity of their lives. However, having said this, it must be considered as all general observations, with the reasonable allowances; for many of the dignified clergy, and others among them, understand, and practise the duties of their station, and some whole orders, as that of the jesuits, are here as they are elsewhere, distin|guishable for their learning, and the decency of their behaviour And certainly, with all their faults, in one respect their zeal is highly commendable; that they are the cause of se|veral charitable foundations; and that they bring the Indians and blacks into some know|ledge of religion, and in some measure miti|gate their slavery. This too has a good poli|tical effect, for those slaves are more faith|ful than ours, and though indulged with great|er liberty, are far less dangerous. I do not Page  235 remember that any insurrection has been ever attempted by them, and the Indians are re|duced to more of a civilized life, than they are in the colonies of any other European nation.

This race of people are now, whatever they were formerly, humble, dejected, timo|rous, and docile; they are generally treated with great indignity, as the state of all people subjected to another people, is infinitely worse than what they suffer from the pressure of the worst form, or the worst administration of any government of their own.

The blacks here, as they are imported from Africa, have the same character as the blacks of our colonies; stubborn, hardy, of an ordinary understanding, and fitted for the gross slavery they endure.

Such are the characters of the people, not only of New Spain, but of all Spanish Ame|rica. When any thing materially different occurs, I shall not fail to mention it.

The civil government is administered by tribunals, which here are called audiences, consisting of a certain number of judges, divided into different chambers, more resem|bling the parliaments in France than our courts. At the head of the chief of these chambers the viceroy himself presides when he sees fit. His employment is one of the greatest trust and power the king of Spain has in his gift; and is perhaps the richest govern|ment Page  236 entrusted to any subject in the world. All employments here are held only by na|tive Spaniards, and by them but for a certain limited time; most not above three years. Jealousy, in this respect, as in all others re|lative to the Indies, is the spirit that influences all their regulations; and it has this very bad effect; that every officer, from the highest to the lowest, has the avidity which a new and lucrative post inspires; ravenous because his time is short, he oppresses the people, and defrauds the crown; another succeeds him with the same dispositions; and no man is careful to establish any thing useful in his office, knowing that his successor will be sure to trample upon every regulation which is not subservient to his own interests; so that this enslaved people has not the power of put|ting in use the fox's policy, of letting the first swarm of bloodsuckers stay on, but is obliged to submit to be drained by a con|stant succession of hungry and impatient harpies.

There are some troops kept in New Spain, and a good revenue appropriated for their maintenance, and for the support of the forti|fications there; but the soldiers are few; ill cloathed, ill paid, and worse disciplined; the military here keep pace with the civil and ecclesiastical administration, and every thing is a jobb.