they appear almost to lose the faculty of distinguishing right and wrong. We are to watch the course of its principal men, see them become gradually more depraved and cease at last even to pretend to virtue. We shall see the treasury looked upon as spoils and proclaimed as an inducement to win partisans."[1]
Another historical writer, in an effort to explain the action of Iturbide in endeavouring to establish a royalist government in Mexico, says:
"It is probable that his penetrating mind distinguished between popular hatred of unjust restraint and the genuine capacity of a nation for liberty, nor is it unlikely that he found among his countrymen but few of those self-controlling, self-sacrificing and progressive elements which constitute the only foundation upon which a republic can be securely founded."[2]
The thought most strongly impressed upon the mind of any student of Mexico's efforts at selfgovernment is that, while its leaders have produced declarations of principles, or "plans" as they are called in revolutionary phraseology, which proclaimed in the most fervent language, unqualified devotion to the national welfare, the word "patriotism," as used by them, does not connote
