to the gods under the sacrificial knife; but criminals, public debtors, extreme paupers, persons who willingly resigned their freedom, and children who were sold by their parents,—were allowed to be held in bondage and to be transferred from hand to hand, but only in cases in which their masters were compelled by poverty to part with them.
A nation over which the god of war presided and whose king was selected, mainly, for his abilities as a chieftain, naturally guarded and surrounded itself with a well devised military system. Religion and war were blended in the imperial ritual. Montezuma, himself had been a priest before he ascended the throne. This dogma of the Aztec policy, originated, perhaps, in the necessity of keeping up a constant military spirit among a people whose instincts were probably civilized, but whose geographical position exposed them, in the beginning, to the attacks of unquiet and annoying tribes. The captives were sacrificed to the bloody
deity in all likelihood, because it was necessary to free the country from dangerous Indians, who could neither be imprisoned, for they were too numerous, nor allowed to return to their tribes, because they would speedily renew the attack on their Aztec liberators.