impossibility, almost age-long, of forming a plexus of social solidarity; character, in the greater part of society has degenerated and the ferocious tendencies of the Aztecs have reappeared. After ten generations, there has returned, to beat within the breasts of some of our compatriots, the barbaric soul of the worshipers of Huitzilopochtl, of those of the sacred springtimes who went, to the lugubrious sounds of the teponastl to make razzias of prisoners in Tlaxcala and Huejotzinco, to open their breasts with obsidian knives, to tear out the heart and eat it in the holocaust of their gods. Three centuries of masses and of barracks have been too little for the complete evolution of character among the people; and if, on the Silesian plain, the Sarmatian of Attila yet appears, so too in our political struggle there has re-appeared, with the indomitable warrior of Ahuitzotl, the sanguinary priest of Huitzilopochtl.
There is, in fact, nothing in our independent history, more lugubrious; even the most illustrious leaders have stained their glory by the shedding, needlessly, of blood. The burning of villages and executions en masse present themselves at the turning of every page like the funeral refrain of an infernal poem; and, if it be true, that there are not lacking some superior souls—as Don Nicolás Bravo, who set at liberty three hundred Spanish prisoners, although he knew the Spanish leader had just shot his father—many other leaders, of that and later epochs, systematically executed all who fell into their hands. The system was converted into a custom and gave such an impress of barbarity to our political struggles as is not to be found even in negro Africa; since there war prisoners are held as captives, whose ransom is the motive of war; slavery redeems them from death.
In Mexico, on the contrary, frequently no account is made of prisoners but only of the killed and wounded; and the latter were shot or knifed in spite of the severity of their wounds. Hidalgo himself not only ordered that those taken in battle should be killed without fail; but in