as well as the government will obtain their enfranchisement.
The money-power of the Church has proved sufficiently strong to save it from the hungry maw of a famishing government, and to stand unaffected by the revolutions that surround it; and now and then, when too bitterly assailed by some political reformer, it finds relief in the assassination of the assailant, as in the case of the eloquent member of the last Congress, who, after a violent philippic against the corruptions of the priests, was found murdered in his chamber. And, as in case of the inquisitorial assassinations, the crime was proved to have been connected with a robbery. The power to overawe courts of justice, proverbially corrupt, and the facilities with which assassinations are procured, are now the most dreaded weapons of the Church, and may account for the nominal conformity of the intelligent classes.
The unbelievers in Mexico, though considerable in numbers, are not organized with a positive creed. Theirs is only a negative existence—unbelief; and they are generally found conforming outwardly, as a more convenient and prudent course than running a tilt with the well-organized forces of the Church.