The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-10
Mexico.

From The ". Y. Tribune
The poet, statesman, or philosopher who
originated the emblem of Mexico has a better
right to invention than most of his compeers.
The leopards of England are subjects of fierce
controversy. The bees, the lilies, the imperial
eagle, and the Gallo cock have been criticized
without end, but the thorny points of the
cactus on which is perched the Mexican bird
and the serpent twined around him, are 80
clearly founded in truth that they defy criti
eism. From the day when Montezuma resigned
his feather circlet to the iron hand of Cortes,
the paths of Mexican dominion have been
thorny, and the serpent, ignoring the weak
ness of the snake-in-the-grass policy, has been
rampant and venomous. The last drama of
the empire has hardly closed on the shudder-
ing audience of the civilized world, when the
curtain rises to fresh oratorio Of horrors.
For the credit OF humanity, and as an install
ment of retributive justice which rarely mani
tests itself in 80 singular manner, Miramon
and MARQUEE perished in the last massacre.
Probably neither of them in their last mo-
ments thought of the thousands they had
murdered, though the ghost of the surgeon Ga
civilian, called from the bedside of the
wounded soldier at Tacubaya whose arm he
had just amputated, and shot without trial,
then and there, in his shirt sleeves, in the
square of the hospital, for tending Miramon's
and Marquez's enemies, might have a moment
behind, and, though past the age of ordinary
men, is active to do mischief. Who, in Anne
RIGA, has not execrated the name of Santa
Anna? For years past, his life at the island
of st. Thomas has been byword. The snow
hill walls which hemmed in his garden at the
top of the higher of the two pyramids which
dominate that harbor, looked on scenes of
oriental splendor and debauchery which served
to "point moral and adOrn tale" 1t was
known that the General carried with him on
his enforced retreat from his native country
fabulous wealth, and the use he made of it
was quite as unscrupulOus as the means by
which it had been raked together. He escaped
immolation by the happiest accident during
his last visit to Yucatan, though the agis OF
American protection was never invoked for a
more unworthy cause. Clinging to life by a
| very thread, with no human tie, for his chill
dren are almost incapable Santa Anna ia
again using his wealth for the disturbance OF
Mexico and greedily stretching out paisied
hand for the glaive of armed power. Hap
| PLY foreign, Intervention has been proved SO
! fatal mistake, its results have been inva-
Iiably so disastrous, that all attempts in
France and Spain have hitherto failed.
mock sympathy with the Cubans on the part oi
certain Mexicans seems to share the same fate,
and Santa Anna is not destined to seize the
occasion. But it is no wonder he calls Chow
long how long?" When will the measure Of
infamy be fall in that unhappy country,
ushered as it was, into the family of nations
as a new world counterbalancing the old in
the imaginative dreams of independence and
freedom INDUCED in by statesmen Centuries
of misrule, bad government, worse faith, pub
lie and private, have gradually produced one
Of the most degrading spectacle that the
civilized world has yet seen. And all this
amidst a wealth of material and physical
riches such as requires poets pen to de-
scribe.