under the lead of Hidalgo; but when the violent outbreak threatened to degenerate into a war of castes, and to array the Indians against all in whose veins circulated Castilian blood, it became the duty of the settlers to cultivate that spirit and discipline which would, at least, preserve them from utter destruction. The succeeding war of independence converted the whole country for eleven years into a camp, and when the strife terminated in success, it was found that a people, whose natural temperament addicted them to military spectacles, had become habituated and enured to a military career.
When the war was over and the power of Spain effectually broken, the contest was transferred from a foreign enemy to domestic foes. Men who had been accustomed for so long a period to military rule did not immediately acquire the habit of self-government. National police required a national army. Officers who had distinguished themselves in an epoch when laws were silent and the only authorities recognized wore the insignia of military life, did not forsake willingly the power they enjoyed. Indeed, they were the only authentic personages capable of enforcing obedience; and their adherents were soon armed against each other in all the contentions for political position which vexed the republic during the dawn of its national existence. Civil wars became habitual. An army was an element of strength and success which no military chieftain thought proper to crush. Rallying his disciplined partizans, as long as his friends or his fortune supplied their support, he was ready at a moment to take the field either for the maintenance of a leader's cause or to secure his own elevation. Nor was this mode of life disagreeable to the body of the army and inferior officers who were lodged and fed at the public expense during a period when it was difficult to find easy or agreeable civil employments in the distracted realm. Each petty subaltern and even every common soldier, clad in the livery of the state and carrying arms, was regarded by the unshod leperos and homeless vagrants as a personage of superior position; and thus, whilst the army became at that epoch popular with the people it had liberated from