Conquest of Mexico
Page 27 (3).—In Egypt the same penalty was attached to the murder of a slave as to that of a freeman. (Diod., Bibl. Hist., lib. i, sec. 77.) Robertson speaks of a class of slaves held so cheap in the eye of the Mexican law, that one might kill them with impunity. (History of America [ed. London, 1776], vol. iii. p. 164.) This, however, was not in Mexico, but in Nicaragua (see his own authority, Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 3, lib. 4, cap. 2), a distant country, not incorporated in the Mexican empire, and with laws and institutions very different from those of the latter.
Page 27 (4).—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38, and Relaciones, MS. The Tezcucan code, indeed, as digested under the great Nezahualcoyotl, formed the basis of the Mexican, in the latter days of the empire.—Zurita, Rapport, p. 95.
Page 28 (1).—In this, at least, they did not resemble the Romans; of whom their countryman could boast, "Gloriari licet, nulli gentium mitiores placuisse pœnas."—Livy, Hist., lib. 1, cap. 28.
Page 28 (2).—The Tezcucan revenues were, in like manner, paid in the produce of the country. The various branches of the royal expenditure were defrayed by specified towns and districts; and the whole arrangements here, and in Mexico, bore a remarkable resemblance to the financial regulations of the Persian empire, as reported by the Greek writers (see Herodotus, Clio, sec. 192); with this difference, however, that the towns of Persia proper were not burdened with tributes, like the conquered cities.—(Idem, Thalia, sec. 97.)
Page 28 (3).—Lorenzana, Hist, de Nueva España, p. 172.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind. lib. 2, cap. 89; lib. 14, cap. 7.—Boturini, Idea, p. 166.—Camargo, Hist, de Tlascala, MS.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 7, cap. 13. The people of the provinces were distributed into calpulli, or tribes, who held the lands of the neighbourhood in common. Officers of their own appointment parcelled out these lands among the several families of the calpulli; and, on the extinction or removal of a family, its lands reverted to the common stock, to be again distributed. The individual proprietor had no power to alienate them. The laws regulating these matters were very precise, and had existed ever since the occupation of the country by the Aztecs.—Zurita, Rapport, pp. 51-62.
Page 28 (4).—The following items of the tribute furnished by different cities will give a more precise idea of its nature:—20 chests of ground chocolate; 40 pieces of armour, of a particular device; 2400 loads of large mantles, of twisted cloth; 800 loads of small mantles, of rich wearing apparel; 5 pieces of armour, of rich feathers; 60 pieces of armour, of common feathers; a chest of beans; a chest of chian; a chest of maize; 8000 reams of paper; likewise 2000 loaves of very white salt, refined in the shape of a mould, for the consumption only of the lords of Mexico: 8000 lumps of unrefined copal; 400 small baskets of white refined copal; 100 copper axes; 80 loads of red chocolate; 800 xicaras, out of which they drank chocolate; a little vessel of small turquoise stones; 4 chests of timber full of maize; 4000 loads of lime; tiles of gold, of the size of an oyster, and as thick as the finger; 40 bags of cochineal; 20 bags of gold-dust, of the finest quality; a diadem of gold, of a specified pattern; 20 lip-jewels of clear amber, ornamented with gold; 200 loads of chocolate; 100 pots or jars of liquid-amber; 8000 handfuls of rich scarlet feathers; 40 tiger-skins; 1600 bundles of cotton, etc., etc.—Col. de Mendoza, part. 2, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, volst, i., vi.
Page 28 (5).—Mapa de Tributos, ap. Lorenzana, Hist. Nueva España.—Tribute-roll, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i., and Interpretation, vol. vi. pp. 17-44. The Mendoza Collection, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, contains a roll of the cities of the Mexican empire, with the specific tributes exacted from them. It is a copy made after the Conquest, with a pen, on European paper. (See Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xvii. Art. 4.) An original painting of the tame roll was in Boturini's museum. Lorenzana has given us engravings of it, in which the outlines of the Oxford copy are filled up, though somewhat rudely. Clavigero considers the explanations in Lorenzana's edition very inaccurate (Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 25), a judgment confirmed by Aglio, who hat transcribed the entire collection of the Mendoza papers, in the first volume of the Antiquities of424
