lives and property of all, and there was no remedy. Fear had held the common people in a degraded position, but they feared no longer. Those who had lorded it over the poor instead of laboring to elevate their condition, were now to suffer the consequences of that neglect.
It is a thankless task to labor for the elevation of the degraded, and oftentimes we are stung with the ingratitude of those whom we have desired to aid. But God, who has enjoined this unpleasant duty upon us, has borne our daily ingratitude without casting us off, and we but imitate him when we continue to minister to the ungrateful, and the unthankful, and even the unmerciful. The people of Mexico had shown more liberality, and given more than we. But they had not given it to educate and to elevate the condition of the poor, but to feed pampered priests, "who walked in long robes, and who loved salutations in the markets," and to women like them, who had placed themselves in an unnatural relation to the world. God requires of all men not only contributions of money, for that is but half charity, but personal services in discharge of the duties of good citizens, and in relieving the afflicted; and he that disregards such duties may suffer as the Mexicans did in the night of the Acordada insurrection, which turned young hairs gray, and destroyed forever the happiness of unnumbered families.
When the common people, brutalized by oppression, found themselves masters of the city, and their oppressors powerless, then burst forth the pent-up hatred of ten generations. "They call us leperos and dogs," said some of them; "let us play the part of dogs—hungry dogs, among these spotted sheep." The palaces of the great were no protection against these infuriated peons, and women who boasted of titles of nobility were not safe. The wealth that generations of unjust monopolists had accumulated was scattered to the winds. Leperos