said, disorganized the establishment and infused inferior men into the sacred ranks. The material of the several brotherhoods degenerated in quality if not in quantity. The irregularities of the friars became proverbial throughout the republic, and respectable families regarded it as a calamity, or, even sometimes, as a degradation, to hear their members pronounce a monastic vow. Thus, whilst the church became unpopular among the upper classes as a means of subsistence,—its numbers were gradually filled and maintained from the humbler ranks, whose ignorance and disorderly habits tend more and more to widen the difference between the secular and the regular clergy of the republic. It is needless to dwell on the baleful influence which such debased and pretended ministers of religion, must exercise among the common classes of a society over which their ecclesiastical authority and the sanctity of their profession gives them control in such a country as Mexico.
We deem it proper to sustain the allegations made especially against a large number of the Mexican clergy by citations from American, English and Spanish authors upon the country, in addition to the quotation already given from Rivero's "Mexico in 1842."
Mr. Norman, in his Rambles in Yucatan, whilst graphically describing certain festivals, and among them those of Christmas and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, says:—"The people testify their respect for those festal days,—for so they are denominated,—by processions and such amusements as are suited. Notwithstanding the acknowledged debasing effects of their sports and pastimes, which consist wholly of bull baiting, cock fighting and gambling, they are not disgraced by either riotousness or drunkenness. * * * The priests give countenance to these recreations, if they may be so called, both by their presence and participation.5 * * * The men, women, and children, as soon as they had concluded their ceremonies, started, in a body, with revolting precipitation, to the gaming tables, which had been set forth in the ruins of an old convent adjoining the sanctuary where the procession had just