Mexico in reality offers conditions for prosperous and enlightened life. Its natural resources are varied, abundant and well distributed. The country does not, like some other Latin American States, draw revenue from any great or special article of export (sooner or later the economic defect of a land), but can be more or less self-contained and self-supplying. Innumerable pleasing towns and picturesque villages are scattered over its surface, which normally are centres of peaceful life, and the population is well distributed. There is much of beauty in the architecture of these towns, and of refinement and dignity among the people—elements largely, a heritage of Spanish rule, added to the native disposition.
The nation is not yet over-commercialized or vulgarized, and if political and economic stability can grow to being without becoming so, Mexico might build up for itself a pleasing and durable civilization, and become a permanent leader among the republics of the New World.
The traveller who has sojourned in this picturesque and romantic land, who has experienced its pleasing hospitality and has understood the character of its people, cannot but hope that such future awaits it. In the coming settlement of the world Mexico has a good deal to offer, but trading must be accompanied in the future by statesmanship, here as elsewhere. Mexico, indeed, is a subject for a science of constructive economic biology.
The history of Mexico after Independence shows how resolutely the Mexicans threw off the method of governance by Royalty, but it is a question whether there might not have been a more sustained and orderly development under that system.
At this time, Mexico was the third largest empire in the world, and included a large part of what is now the Western United States, such as California and Texas and the adjoining territories, as well as Guatemala. She began her independent history with an emperor—Iturbide, who patriotically wished to strive against the "Holy Alliance" which schemed to bring about the re-domination of Spain, but he was executed by Mexicans, and fell, serene, and disdainful of his ungrateful compatriots.
The ill-fated figure of Maximilian stands out in picturesque silhouette in Mexican history, well-meaning but weak; as does the pathetic story of the Empress Carlota, and her appeal to Napoleon against his perhaps perfidious withdrawal of French troops from Mexico. Maximilian was "executed" at Queretaro. Two faithful Mexican officers shared his fate—Miramon and Mejia. "Take you the place of honour in the centre," said the ill-fated Hapsburg prince in turn to each of them, as facing the file of soldiers they awaited the volley. But each declined, the carbines rang out, and so passed the dream of empire in Mexico. An Austrian warship arrived to take his body; the commander asking for the remains of "the Emperor of Mexico." But he was informed that "no such person had existed," although the body of "Maximilian of Austria" was delivered to him. In the Museum of Mexico to-day, all that remains is his gilded coach and some other trappings.
The dream of empire in Mexico was largely due to the Napoleon of the times, and was mainly frustrated by the action of the United States and the Monroe Doctrine. Imperial government was, however, supported by a very large party of upper class Mexicans.
The Mexicans, rightly or wrongly, have retained to this day a certain animosity against the United States by reason of the loss of their huge northern territory of Texas, in what they called la guerra injusta, the "unjust war," in which they declared that American machinations were displayed in order to deprive them of the land. One phase of this history was in the filling up of Texas, in part, by American filibusters, and in the upholding of slavery there by the American Government, the Mexicans having made a decree forbidding slavery; and this must be recorded to the credit of Mexico. Black slavery there brought a dreadful fruit, and even in recent—and present—times race riots, including the burning alive of negroes, have been a result.