They are the most finished conservatives on
the face of the earth, and see ruin in change quite as readily as if
they lived in New England and their opinions were worth quoting on
State Street. The traveller can see in Mexican fields, to-day, the
manner in which those fields were cultivated in the early days of the
last Montezuma, before the Spaniard had entered the land,--as in Canada
he can occasionally find men following the customs that were brought,
more than two centuries ago, from Brittany or Normandy. The Indians are
practically enslaved by two things: they are so attached to the soil on
which they are born as to regard expulsion from it as the greatest of
all punishments,--thus being much like those serfs who, in some other
countries, are legally bound to the land, and are sold with it; and
they are forever in debt, the consequence of reckless indulgence, and
of that inability to think of the morrow which is the most prominent
characteristic of the inferior races of men. This has caused
the existence of the system of _peonage_, of which so much has been
said in this country, in the attempts that have been made to show that
slavery already prevails in Mexico.
Pages:
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330