Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/111

MEXICO. 79 ferior offices swarmed with hangers on, and candidates for pre- ferment, all Europeans, and all expecting, by means best known to themselves, to make a rapid fortune. That these expectations were not disappointed, may be inferred from the fact, that, under the administration of the Prince of Peace, government situations, even ivithout a salary, were in great request, and were found to be a sure road to affluence. The complaints of the Creoles, and the endeavours of some of the more enlightened amongst the Europeans themselves, to bring the most notorious offenders to justice, were equally fruitless. They were frustrated, partly by the rank and influ- ence of the transgressors, and partly by that spirit of clanship, (I can find no other word to express what I mean,) by which the Europeans, of every description, were united amongst themselves. It is necessary to visit America in order to have any idea of the extent to which this feeling was carried. It became, at last, a passion, which induced them to prefer the ties of country to the ties of blood. The son, who had the misfortune to be born of a Creole mother, was considered as an inferior, in the house of his own father, to the Euro- pean book-keeper, or clerk, for whom the daughter, if there were one, and a large share of the fortune, were reserved. " Eres Criollo, y basta :" — (you are a Creole, and that is enough !) was a common phrase amongst the Spaniards when angry with their children ; and was thought to express all the contempt that it is in the power of language to convey. It was a term of ignominy, a term of reproach, until time taught those, to whom it was applied, to use it rather as an honourable distinction, and to oppose it to that of Gdchupin, as designating the party of those infatuated men, who ima- gined, that the circumstance of having been born in the arid plains of Castille, or La Mancha, gave them a moral, and intellectual superiority, over all the inhabitants of the New World. Not the least remarkable trait in the Revo- lution of America, is the sort of proscription which the