Branz Mayers' Mexico [pp. 117-141]

122 Brantz Mayer's Mexico. [July,
With the recall of Cortez to Spain, the romance of
Mexican history closes. From that point, where the
polished narrative of Prescott leaves us, Mr. Mayer's
clear and well~digested record of subsequent events brings
us down to the present time. What he has to relate lacks
the engrossing interest of personal biography, and the
thrilling accompaniments of the conquest; but the philosophical student will perhaps find his pages the more interesting, in that they substitute for the rush of antecedent
events the calm analysis of the results that flowed from
them, and the investigation of causes that, in the slow
processes of their development, exchanged colonial rule
for independent nationality. The history of the world
has very imperfectly solved the problem, how nations
shall be best governed. To the reverse of the proposition,
however, Spain may be held to have furnished a strong
illustration, in the government of her Mexican depend an
cy, after the death of Cortez. Although the spirit of religion, or bigotry, mingled largely with all schemes of conquest and settlement in the New World, the controlling
motive was unquestionably gold. The first measures
adopted, therefore, were such as looked to the readiest
and fullest supply of treasure. The natural advantages
of the country, its facilities for commercial, agricultural
or manufacturing development, were of too secondary
importance to merit consideration, so long as the supply
of the precious metals held out. Not only the capacities
of the soil, but the common obligations of humanity, were
disregarded by this grasping avarice, and the native population of Mexico were so absolutely degraded into mere
instruments for the accretion of wealth, that it really
seemed to need the bull of his lloliness, issued in 1537,
declaring the aborigines to be "ipsos veros homines," to
raise the aborigines to the dignity of men. This lust of
gold, first manifested by the government at home and the
settlers in Mexico, against the natives of the country,
which led to their abject debasement, and subjected them
to cruel wrongs, was also at the bottom of that shortsighted and grievous policy, which, afterward carried out
in the vice-royal rule, became the cause of final rupture,
and has always contributed to retard the expansion of
Mexico. We pronounce such a policy eminently unwise,
because, although it attains one of the results of labour,