698 AMERICA [ANCIENT PERU. was the reverse of cruel. The severe punishments pre scribed by their laws were rarely inflicted, and rebellion was scarcely known in their dominions. The Inca not only assumed the title of the father of his people, but the vices as well as the merits of his government sprung partly from the attempt made to construct the govern ment on the model of paternal authority, and partly from the blending of moral and religious injunctions with civil duties. Hence the idle pretension of the state to reward virtuous conduct, as well as to punish crimes ; hence too the plan of labouring in common, the extinction of individual property, the absurdities of eating, drinking, sleeping, tilling, building, according to fixed universal rules ; in fine, that minute and vexatious regulation of all the acts of ordinary life, which converted the people into mere machines in the hands of an immense corps of civil and religious officers. Such a system may have served to reclaim some tribes from the savage state; but it must have stifled the seeds of improvement, and left the mass of the people more stupid and imbecile than it found them. The government was as pure a despotism, pro bably, as ever existed ; but its theocratic character, no doubt, helped to mitigate the ferocity of its spirit. Super stition and force are the two bases on which tyranny rests in all countries ; and in proportion as it is firmly seated on the one, it stands less in need of the support of the other. The Inca had so completely enslaved the minds of his subjects, and the apparatus he wielded for directing and controlling their acts was so perfect, that he was able in a great measure to dispense with those ter rific examples of cruelty and bloodshed, by which the pure military despot operates on the fears of those who live under his authority.
- in of This system of the Peruvian monarchs, by which the
ivian people were kept in a state of perpetual tutelage, merits the greater attention, because it is precisely that which the Jesuits employed, in Paraguay and other districts, to reduce the natives to a settled mode of life ; and it seems, in fact, to be the only method by which a semblance of civilisation can be introduced amongst the American nations. Two things must be supposed to account for its prevalence : first, a certain amount of timidity, passive- ness, and superstition, in the body of the people, implying weak passions, but not necessarily smallness of intellect ; and, secondly, a few minds of a higher class, to give an impulse to the rest, and to control and regulate their acts. In the case of Peru, did these ruling intellects spring from the body of the people, and, after striking out new lights in morals and legislation for themselves, devise a complex and artificial system for establishing their power over the minds of the rest, by the help of superstition and force ] or were they strangers from another country, and imbued with the principles of a higher civilisation 1 If we may believe the Peruvian annals, the latter was the case. About the year 1000 of our era, or perhaps a cen tury later, Manco Capac, with his wife and sister Mama Ocello, appeared as strangers on the banks of the lake Titicaca. They were persons of majestic appearance, and announced themselves as " children of the sun," sent by their beneficent parent to reclaim the tribes living there from the miseries of savage life. Their injunctions, ad dressed to a people who probably worshipped the god of day, were listened to by a few, who settled around them, and founded Cuzco. By degrees, other tribes were in duced to renounce their wandering habits. Manco Capac instructed the men in agriculture and the arts, and Mama Ocello taught the women to spin and to weave. Laws, institutions, and religious rites, were added. The form of a civilised society arose, which was gradually extended by persuasion or conquest, the Incas having always planted their arts and religion wherever they established their authority. Huayna Capac, the twelfth in succession from the founder of the dynasty, occupied the throne when the first party of Spaniards visited Peru in 1527, and the em pire was then still in a state of progress. There is, however, little doubt that some advance in civilisation had been made in times before the Incas. Such is the account which the Peruvians give of the origin of their civilisation, which we should be disposed to reject as a fable, if there were not peculiar circumstances which give it some credibility. First, their institutions, taken in the mass, do not present what may be called the American type. The mild and paternal character which they display, the injunction to " love one another" raised to the rank of a positive precept, the preference of tho useful arts to war, all breathe a spirit, not only foreign to the genius of the American tribes, but exactly opposed in character to anything which a native self-taught legisla tor was likely to produce. Secondly, the artificial and systematic form of the Peruvian institutions _ renders it improbable that they were developed by the natural ac tion of political causes, but strongly favours the idea, that they were framed by a few designing heads, as an instru ment to tame and govern a patient, feeble, and credulous people of rude or savage habits. A small number of Jesuits were led, by a sagacious study of the savage charac ter, to devise a system extremely similar in its nature, Avhich worked admirably. These missionaries were the Manco Capacs of Paraguay; and, like the Incas, might, in the course of two or three centuries, have extended their theocracy over as large a space as Peru, if their situation had permitted them to employ force. Thirdly, a million of native Peruvians yet survive, the living descen dants of those who built the temples of Cuzco ; and their extreme stolidity, apathy, and feebleness of character, sufficiently testify that the chances were nearly as great against a legislator like Manco Capac arising amongst them, as against the Jews in the time of Augustus pro ducing a being like Jesus Christ. They have the weak ness and passiveness which fit them to receive an im pression from superior directing minds ; but they discover no trace of the intelligence, energy, and originality which must have been united in the persons who planned and carried into effect the political system of the Incas. Wo admit that oppression may have degraded their character, but it cannot have entirely changed it. If, then, the civilisation of Peru was exotic, whence was it derived ? To us it appears most probable, that the legis lators of Peru were either Chinese, or persons who had received at second-hand a knowledge of the arts and in stitutions of China ; and our opinion is grounded on traits of resemblance in the manners, laws, arts, and institutions of the two nations, which, in our opinion, are too mime rous, striking, and peculiar, to be the effect of chance. We shall mention some of the most prominent. 1. The first and most obvious resemblance is in the singularly artificial frame of society in both countries. In China, as in Pern, the legislation is directive as well as punitive, and is distinguished by that minute and elaborate system of regulation, inspection, and control, which inter feres with the most trifling actions of ordinary life, and reduces the mass of the people to the condition of automata, moved and guided in everything by the rulers. China, says Mr Barrow, is a great school, in which the magis trates are the masters, and the people the scholars. It might be more correctly compared to a large monastic establishment, in which each person has his place and his duty assigned to him, and all his acts directed by supe riors, whose wisdom and authority he is not permitted to question. The Chinese have the same immense multitude Foreign legislators and tecicliers. Peruvians and Chi nese corn-
pa red.
