Year: 1863

The New York Evening Post, on the authority
of private letters states that the Liberals of Mexi


90 (the Juarez party) have determined to give up
the contest with the French and submit to the
fortune of war; that Gen. Comonfort had taken
the oath of fidelity to the Government established
by Gen. Forey and that it was probable that the
greater part of the Liberals will also make their
peace. 1t seems that they consider the struggle
hopeless and perhaps injurious to their country and


prefer peace and the security of their rights OF
property to the risks of war. And we should think
that they acted wisely in doing so, considering
how fruiless have proved all their bloody intestine
struggles to obtain these objects through the inde


pendent establishment of Republican Govern
ment. They will have exchanged the wretched-
ness of civil war, which has afflicted their unhappy
country almost unremittingly from the birth Of
their nation for at least two of the blessings for
which government was ordained-thosc, namely, of
Internal peace and the protection of property
the latter indeed being held by high British
authority as the highest function, if not chief
value of civil government. However this may
be, as general rule, certain it is the people of
Mexico have not been able to secure this es-
sential good through any of the transient forms
of government which they have spent almost
the entire period of their existence in rearing
1t has been said, indeed, by one of the most en-
lightened observers and longest foreign residents
in Mexico, that the inhabitants of the country
that is of the Central States, which constitute the
controlling power Of that extended Confederacy-
had, through the long prevalence of civil war and
anarchy, come to be divided substantially into two
classes, the plunderers and the plundered; the
former embracing all the loose adventurers of the
land, ever ready to follow any chieftan who could
pay them, and by making political pronuncia-
miento against the President or Dictator of the
day, give them military license for spoiation and
pillage; the latter class consisting of the men Of
property, planters, merchants, miners artzans, and
friends of order, who would at any time have glad


y exchanged half their property for security to the
remainder and the blessing of peace which boon it
seems they are now to receive at the hands of a
foreign conqueror. The possession of this long
desired good must doubtless suffer some alloy from
the mode and medium through which it is ac-

quired. This reflection must naturally touch the
sensibilities and the national pride of the true
friends of freedom in country where, amidst SO
much of gross ignorance and licentiousness, there
is yet SO much of high cultivation, bravery, and
public spirit. But, as long and bloody experience
has sadly shown there is in the nature of the race
the habtudes Of the people, or the frame of society
in the Spanish American States, not in Mexico
alone but all, from the Sierra Madre to the Andes,
something apparently inimcal to the consolidation
of free government and the habitual obedience to
public law. For nearly fifty years the people of
Mexico have striven to attain this highest form of
government, but their efforts have resulted in every
phase of government save this. They have tried
Emperors, Dictators, and long iuc Of Presidents,
SO called but rational liberty and regular govern
ment, the safety of person and security of proper
ty, have eluded their grasp, and proved to thcm
far, an ignis .fatuus.