Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/113

MEXICO. 81 doubly galling. They were, therefore, taught to believe that the fate of all mankind was similar to their own ; or rather, that they were pre-eminently fortunate, in belonging to a monarchy so much superior in power and dignity to the rest of the world. Spain was to them the queen of nations : hablar Christiano, (to speak a Christian language,) was the privilege of those by whom her dialect was used ; while Eng- lish and French, Germans and North Americans, were in- volved in one indiscriminate condemnation, as Jews, heretics, and unbelievers, with whom no good Catholic could hold intercourse without contamination. The Inquisition was constituted the guardian of this belief, and discharged the duty with a zeal that proved how fully its importance was felt. The works of Luther were not more rigorously proscribed, than modern histories, or politi- cal writings ; and, even as late as 1811, by a strange ano- maly, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was de- nounced as a damnable heresy in Mexico, at the very time that it was solemnly sanctioned by the Cortes in Spain. Par- ticular studies, however, were encouraged amidst this gene- ral tendency to stifle inquiry ; especially scholastic divinity, which was considered a very harmless amusement, and the mathematics. Some attention too was paid to the arts of drawing and sculpture, and, in the mining districts, to miner- alogy, which, in Mexico particularly, was patronised with kingly munificence : but there can be no doubt that this was done, principally with a view to divert the attention of the Creoles from more dangerous pursuits : the spirit of the sys- tem was to exclude information, and to check the progress of the human mind. Nothing can illustrate this more strongly, than a Royal decree, addressed, in 1785, to the Viceroy of Peru, by the enlightened Galvez, (as Humboldt deservedly calls him, on account of the many practical reforms introduced by him into the administration of the Colonies,) who was, at that VOL. 1. G