involuntary, may even be respected in the sufferer, but the Indian who becomes a slave in spite of law, by religious superstition, loathsome vices, and time-hallowed servility, sinks far below the level of the African, who is sober, careful, faithful to his master and his family, and either from imitation, or a degree of natural dignity, seeks to acquire respectability among his fellow slaves.
"It is hardly possible," says Mühlenpfordt, "to judge of the true character and intellectual capacity of the Indian at a time when he has but just partially recovered his rights as man, and has had little opportunity of giving independent culture to his mental faculties. Though the civic oppression under which the Spaniards and Creoles held all the copper colored race and the colored people generally before the revolution, has, for the most part disappeared, yet their emancipation has, as yet, only nominally taken place. Hierarchial oppression has yet hardly decreased, and the clergy, both the inferior secular priests and the monks who have the greatest influence over the Indians, find their account in declining to promote, if they do not positively retard, their intellectual development. Time only can inform us what advantages will accrue to the Indians from the new order of things. Up to this period the introduction of the boasted civilization of Europe, as well as of the Catholic religion, has been of but trifling benefit to them, and only a trace here and there of progress to an amelioration of their condition is to be remarked.
"The Mexican Indian of the present day is generally grave and taciturn, and almost sullen, when not excited by music and intoxicating drinks to loquacity and pleasure. This serious character may be remarked even in the children, who appear more knowing at the age of five or six, than those of northern Europeans at that of nine or ten. But this appearance of steadiness is by no means consequent on a quicker development of mind, and the looks of these young people, dejected and void of all the cheerfulness and confidence of children, have nothing that gladdens the observer. Gruffness and reserve appear to be essential features of the