Such is the substance of many a tale of misery, if you will stop and listen to the pictures which the lowly draw of their condition in any of the Mexican cities. Often they are fabricated, but very often they are true. The old woman who tells you a tale to excite your sympathies has perhaps only borrowed a tale of misfortune which she has heard her neighbor tell. Those who reproach these poor unfortunates with being beggars, thieves, and liars, forget that they have been made such by oppression. The greatest amount of suffering caused by the civil wars falls upon the poor; and among the suffering poor, the women are the greatest sufferers. If they are more intemperate than the men, it is their misfortunes, too often, that have driven them to seek a temporary solace in pulque. The slight hold they have on their husbands is the cause of their jealousy, and if they take part in bloody affrays, it is because they are under the influence of intoxication, and not from any inherent inclination to cruelty.
Never did a white skin cover a kinder heart than that of the poor Meztizo women of Spanish America. Their primitive hut by the wayside is as much at your service as your own castle, and you are heartily welcome to their humble fare. I never was so unfortunate as to need their assistance, but I have often been astonished at the ready charity of the poor to those poorer than themselves. I once encountered an Irishman who had begged his way from the Gulf coast almost to the Pacific, and I was greatly surprised at the cheerfulness with which a poor widow woman, keeper of a venta, accepted of a blessing instead of more tangible coin for a night's entertainment. In delicate health always, and not without a full share of experience among strangers, I know full well how to appreciate the kind offices which a woman only can render. When death stared me in the face, and she could do nothing for a perishing heretic except to solicit a passing procession to chant a misericordia por un infirmo Americano, that kindly office was not wanting. When, with returning health, I ventured out into the street, leaning upon a staff, a poor Indian woman, forgetting her native shyness, begged me to sit down under the shade of her roof while she prepared for me a little orange-water, and when, a little refreshed by her orange-water, I tottered on, I shall never forget the look of sympathy which she bestowed upon an unknown stranger. An Indian woman is always kind, but the kindest of her race is the poor despised Indian woman of Spanish America.
It is too common to look down coldly, and not unfrequently with contempt, upon those who occupy the humbler walks of life, and to speak only of their vices. The peon has his vices, and they are glaring enough, but he is certainly not worse than his white neighbor. I had been so long in California, and had seen so many exhibitions of courage in street-fights and personal encounters, that I had come almost to consider the words white man and brave man as synonymous. But when I found myself in Mexico at the breaking out of a civil war, I soon learned that white men are not always brave, and that they were superior to the Indian in little else except in the gilding with which they covered their vicious and corrupt lives. They borrow their customs from Paris and their style of living, but their morals are even below the Paris standard of virtue.
WOMAN'S RIGHTS AT MEXICO.
The law, which sinks the civil existence of the wife in the husband, and which charges the husband with liability for the debts and trespasses of the wife, is sometimes stigmatized as harsh, unnatural, and tyrannical. If those that consider it so could for a little while enjoy the matrimonial freedom of Mexico, they would soon discover abundant reason for praising the wisdom of our ancestors in hedging about with so many disabilities an institution which is both the safeguard of public morality and of our free government. Family government, self-government, and political freedom dwell together; while despotism and family license are inseparable. At Mexico, old family relations are not broken up by new marriages. Household family worship is unknown, but, like so many pagans, each one trudges off to say her prayers separately, and at a favorite shrine. The wife has her separate property and interests, which she manages with the aid of her "next friend." The husband, too, has his separate interests, and too often his "next friend" is his neighbor's wife.
After my return from Mexico, I heard a woman in a public assembly advocating, as social reforms, the institutions of a country in a state of moral and political decomposition. I felt like exclaiming, "Cursed be that woman who would introduce into our happy country the social customs of paganism; and cursed be that people who listen to her infidelity!" May a like evil fall upon those legislative tinkers who have deprived the husband of the power of creating a trust for the protection and support of his wife in time of necessity.
We have examined sufficiently the social condition of Mexico to show that there is no natural sympathy between the whites and the colored races, or the governing and governed races of Mexico. For a brief period, indeed, Guerrero, a man of Indian descent, occupied the presidency; but he was deposed and murdered, and the government has ever since been in the hands of the whites. The present Pinto war in the southwest looks toward again reviving the Indian rule. It is carried on too languidly to promise success, as there seems to be no one in the movement possessed of the energy of that Indian drummer, Carrera, who usurped the supreme power in Guatemala. On the other hand, Mexico is like a ripe pear, ready to fall into the lap of any unscrupulous adventurer who chooses to make common plunder of its churches, its church jewels, and the inordinate private fortunes of its priesthood and nobility.
MORMONISM AND MOHAMMEDANISM.
There is a rising cloud that is gathering blackness in the northwest, and must sooner or later precipitate itself and with the force of a tempest sweep away—to use the words of General Tornel—in one mighty flood "the religion, language, and national existence of the Mexicans." This is Mormonism. I have watched this delusion from its rise, near my own residence in Western New York, and followed its advancing progress, until, from a little rill, it has become a mighty torrent—a political element so potent that its existence in the United States is now scarcely tolerable. Where can it go except it precipitate itself upon the territories of imbecile Mexico? To such a sect of fanatics Mexico can present no opposition. It must surrender to Brigham Young and to his followers their wealth, their images, their wives and their daughters, as the Aztecs surrendered all to Cortéz.
I have often traced the close analogy between the rise of Mormonism and that of Mohammedanism, as well as the striking similarity that exists between these two systems of false religion. Each one is founded, after a fashion, on the Bible, to which each has supplemented a volume of miserable fables, the one called the Book of Mormon, and the other the Koran. Each has a spurious prophet, who is exalted above the prophets of Scripture. Both systems permit polygamy, and both are most ultra-Protestant in relation to the forms and ceremonies, images and pictures of the Oriental and Latin churches. And as God sent the great Mohammedan imposture to punish the corrupt Christianity of a former age, so in like manner He may soon commission Mormonism to wipe out of existence the corrupt Christianity of Mexico. Mormonism has not yet developed a military character, because it would be madness to raise an arm against the United States. But when it shall have once passed the frontier and entered the dominions of a feeble state, then we shall see how keen an edge fanaticism can give to the sword in the hands of men naturally courageous, when the double motive is held out of a new supply of wives, and the inexhaustible treasures of the churches to stimulate their fanaticism.