sources, and set them further thinking of divorcement. Again, the Creoles were more intelligent, better informed, and far more numerous than the blueblooded Spaniards; in view of which we can only wonder that the people of Mexico remained in such humiliating subjection so long. The Spaniards in America and their children were even better educated than the Spaniards in Spain, and the higher their station and the more inflated their pride, the more their minds were filled with prejudice and ignorance. The establishment of the university at Mexico afforded facilities to the Creoles superior to any enjoyed by their fathers, who for the most part, exclusive of those holding high positions, were of inferior birth and breeding, and without title to the superiority claimed. Students and graduates in Mexico by no means confined themselves to the narrow curriculum prescribed by the university, and the prohibited works of French philosophers, of political and moral writers, and especially of Rousseau, found their way of late into the country. Proletarian principles, and the detestation of oppression which they breathed, were absorbed with avidity, and stimulated the longing for freedom. The very danger incurred by the study of these books, and the secrecy with which of necessity they were perused, only served to intensify insurrectionary ideas and provoke conspiracy.[1] The liberal principles thus acquired by the educated class were gradually infused into the ignorant.
Nevertheless, it seems a little strange to us, to whom the doctrine of right of revolution has become so clear, and so cherished as the highest prerogative of liberty, that it should have made its way so slowly among an educated and intelligent people. But the cause is
- ↑ It was the special province of the inquisition to guard against the importation of books. As late as 1807, a Mexican named José Roxas was denounced by his own mother for having a volume of Rousseau in his possession, and was confined for several years in the dungeons of the holy office. He finally made his escape, but died in 1811 at New Orleans. Ward's Mex., i. 110.
