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Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/180

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154
GARROTTE—MEXICAN OPINIONS.
Men. Women. Total.
Robbery, 1,500 470 1970
Prostitution, adultry, bigamy, sodomy and incest, 312 179 491
Quarreling, wounding, 2,129 1,140 3,233
Rioting and bearing arms, 612 444 1,056
Homicide and attempt at ditto, and robbery and
homicide, 70 17 87
Rape and incontinence, 65 21 86
Forgery, 7 1 8
Gambling, 3 0 3
———
Total, 6934
High grades of crime, 6934
Misdemeanors, 1927
———
Total, 8861
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$4,121 were expended for salaries in the Acordada; and $30,232 for the maintenance of the prisoners. It should be stated, moreover that a large number of the above criminals were committed and punished for throviring vitriol on the dress and faces of persons in the street;—that 113 dead bodies were found;—894 individuals sent to hospitals; and 17 executed by the garrotte. The culprit who is sentenced to this mode of expiating his crime is seated in a chair on the scaffold, whilst his neck is embraced by an iron collar which may be contracted by a screw. A sudden and rapid turn of the lever drives a sharp point through the spinal marrow at the moment that the band closes around the throat and strangles the victim.

Note.—In confirmation of all we have said in this chapter in regard to the administration and condition of law in Mexico, and in relation to the army, we refer to an able pamphlet published in that country, in 1848, entitled "Consideraciones sobre la Situacion Politica y Social de la Republica Mjicana en el ano 1847," written, we understand, by Don Francisco Lerdo. It presents a dark picture of the country at that epoch; but the author's purpose was to unmask the social and political diseases of his country, and his patriotic task was the more needed because that country was on the brink of ruin from war.

It is to be especially noted with commendation that the Mexicans have recently become the severest critics not only of their institutions but of themselves. The miserable, boasting spirit,—the taste for grandiloquent proclamations,—the indiscriminate laudation of Mexican virtue, talent, science, honor, valor, and justice, which filled the papers and pamphlets of the nation, but which were never sustained when the Mexicans came in contact either with highly cultivated foreigners or were opposed by foreign arms, have all been greatly qualified since the war. The combined lessons of her unsparing but truthful satirists and of her invading enemies, will not be lost on a people really sensible and sensitive, though bewildered for more than a quarter of a century during which bombast served for glory or consolation when anarchy was not altogether triumphant. In confirmation of this growing spirit of self-examination with a view to national reform, we would also reffer to the discreet and able memoir of Don Luis G. Cuevas, minister of foreign and domestic relations, read by him before the Chamber of Deputies, on the 5th of January, 1849.