in respect to both government and religion. It is true that Spain, if called to plead at the bar of public opinion, might point to her own situation and decadence as in the nature of judgment confessed and punishment awarded. But what has the Church, in whose hands for so many years was exclusively vested the matter of education, and which lacked nothing in the way of power and opportunity, to say to the appalling depths of ignorance in which she has left the Mexican people; an ignorance not confined to an almost entire lack of acquaintance with the simplest elements of scholastic learning—reading, writing, and the rules of common arithmetic—but even with the commonest tools and mechanical appliances of production and civilization? But, wherever may be the responsibility for such a condition of things, the conclusion seems irresistible that, against the moral inertia of such an appalling mass of ignorance, the advancing waves of any higher civilization are likely to dash for a long time without making any serious impression.
