For the present, if not forever, Juarez may be left out of all American
calculations concerning Mexico; and as to Miramon, though his prospects
are apparently fair, the intelligent observer of Mexican politics
cannot fail to have seen that the glare of the clerical eye is upon
him, and that some faint indications on his part of a determination not
to be the Church's vassal have already placed his supremacy in peril,
and perhaps have caused conspiracies to be formed against him which
shall prove more injurious to his fortunes than the operations of
Liberal armies or the Messages of American Presidents. The Mexican
Church, full-blooded and wealthy as it is, is the skeleton in the
palace of every Mexican chief that spoils his sleep and threatens to
destroy his power, as it has destroyed that of every one of his
predecessors. The armies and banners of the Americans of the
North cannot be half so terrible to Miramon, supposing him
to be a reflecting man, as are the vestments of his clerical
allies. Even those armies, too, may be called into Mexico by
the Church, and those banners become the standards of a crusading host
from among a people which of all that the world has ever seen is the
least given to religious intolerance, and to whom the mere thought of
an established religion is odious.
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