three hundred years, and gradually the army had become accustomed to decide upon and settle all political questions. The result of this warlike transformation is well known. To-day the pettiest Mexican officer fancies himself called on, not by a political conviction, but only by his own ambition, to protect or to overturn the established government. It would seem, as one might say, that an article of the Constitution gives to every one the right of becoming a colonel.
Accustomed since infancy to trample under foot all civil institutions, the cadet, transformed into an officer almost before the age of reason, and the soldier of fortune, to whom a long series of pronunciamentos, in which he has taken part, has given a commission, have both in view the same design, a rapid promotion by the same way, that of insurrection. Liable to be broken at every instant by a sudden change in the government, the officers have no hope of obtaining a higher grade but by their swords. Then, according to the fortunes of civil war, the officer who has fought his way to a higher rank, or who has seen the banner under which he fought leveled with the dust, has no more chance of getting his pay from the new government than he had from the old. He thus constitutes himself a creditor of the state till some stray bullet closes his account forever, or till the time when he can dip his fingers into the public purse, and become a permanent debtor of those who have outstripped him in his career. However, although the vicissitudes to which the country has been subjected are numberless, it is the exception, and not the rule, if the officer arrive at the head of affairs; his life, in such a case, becomes only a continual series of annoyances. Then, a revolutionist by ambition— a gambler by nature— a
