Since we left Mexico, I have not cared to follow very accurately even the newspaper intelligence of what has been and still is going on there. It is a pitiable history. Continual wars and revolutions, utter insecurity of life and property, the Indians burning down the haciendas in the South and turning out the white people, the roads on the plains impassable on account of deserters and robbers; sometimes no practical government at all, then two or three at once, who raise armies and fight a little sometimes, but generally confine themselves to plundering the peaceable inhabitants. An army besieges the capital for months, but appears to do nothing but cut the water off from the aqueducts, shoot stragglers, and levy contributions. One leader raises a forced loan among the foreign residents, and imprisons or expels those who do not submit. The leader on the other side does the same in his part of the country, putting the British merchant in prisons where a fortnight would be a fair average life for an European, and threatening him with summary courtmartial and execution if he does not pay.
London newspapers dwell on these details, and tell us that we may learn from the condition of this unfortunate country how useless are democratic forms among a people incapable of liberty, and that very weak governments can commit all sorts of crimes with impunity, from the fact that they have no official existence which foreign powers can recognize; and various other weighty moral lessons, which must be highly edifying to our countrymen in the Republic, who are meanwhile left pretty much to shift for themselves.
All this time the United States are steadily advancing; and the destiny of the country is gradually accomplishing itself. That its total absorption