was a victory, and that every victory was gained in the teeth of tremendous odds, and the moral deduced by Europe from the war was one of serious service to us.

But, more than all this, the war has been fruitful in results so interesting in their present development, and so vast in the expansion to which they are tending, as to amaze the world. The soldier opened the way for the diplomatist, and the pioneer trod quickly on the heels of both. For three hundred years, the dull blood of the unprogressive Spaniard had stagnated in California, and a handful of idle monks, and a few herds of coerced Indian converts, gathered in some dozen missions, had alone testified the presence of the "spiritual conquerors." The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was hardly dry, ere the wagon of the emigrant and the ship of the trader were bearing to our new possessions the fresh blood and vigorous impulses of our energetic people. The spade of the labourer turned up the hidden gold, and the forests of the Sierra Nevada rustled with the shouts of a thronging population, and the calm waters of the Pacific glassed the spires of magic cities. Never before, in the history of the world, had the actual so eclipsed the ideal the fact outgrown the fiction. From the beds of swift rivers, and the clasp of the rough granite, the hand of enterprise reclaimed the shining gold, in undreamed-of millions; the broad valleys grew yellow with the harvests of the farmer, and the crowded cities echoed the din of trade; the acquired property invoked the needed law, and the heterogeneous elements of a cosmopolitan emigration grew into the fair proportions of an organized State; and now, firmly seated upon the borders of the Pacific, the New World confronts the sea. The probabilities of the future open a yet wider field to the startled imagination. We will not pause to scan it; but of one thing we rest assured, that, bound up with the developments of that future, lie hidden the most serious interests of humanity. The historian, who, ages hence, looks back to the epoch of this second conquest, in which the free thought replaced the old superstition, and the earnest heart of enterprise and the strong arm of labour fought the battles of progress, will shrink appalled from the magnitude of his task.

By the treaty of Guadalupe we gained from Mexico. over eight hundred thousand square miles of territory,

which is considerably more than one-half of her ancient boundaries; and she has now a superficial extent of only seven hundred and ninety-eight thousand square miles. This territory is hung, as it were, between the two giant arms of the Cordillera of the Andes, which traverse the country, the one on the side of the Gulf of Mexico, and the other skirting the Pacific. The broad table land, thus curiously suspended between mountains, rising to a height of seventeen thousand feet, is itself over seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and its peculiar physical structure gives it every variety of climate, and clothes it with all the phenomena of vegetation. It is, of course, a country of singular loveliness, and all travellers have borne enthusiastic testimony to its beauty. The prolific soil yields freely, and with little labour, corn, cotton, indigo, tobacco, the olive and the vine, with vegetables and fruits in great abundance. The agricultural resources of the country, however, are very partially developed. The land is held, in immense tracts, by wealthy proprietors, who prefer the easy returns which their vast herd yield them, to the labours of an agriculture that lacks the stimulus of commerce to make it profitable, by enlarging the demand for its productions. The mineral wealth of Mexico has always been its most important feature. Mr. Mayer furnishes very full and carefully prepared tables, which seem to embody all the information desirable upon this subject. There are eight mining districts, which cover a space of some twelve hundred square leagues. Humboldt estimated the mines to have yielded, between the periods of the discovery and the independence of New Spain, $2,028,000,000; and Mr. Mayer states the production, since 1826,. to have been as high as $20,000,000 annually. The yield, in silver, in some districts, is enormous-a mine near Sombrereto, for instance, yielding, from outcropping alone,. from a front of only one hundred and two feet, no less than $4,000,000 nett profit in five months!

Mr. Mayer has also tabularized, with great industry,, and in an admirable manner, the statistics of the revenues and expenses of the government, and of agriculture, manufactures and commerce. We have not the space to give these tables; but they will greatly aid the reader in understanding some of the causes to which we have alluded already, as retarding the expansion of Mexico. In

this connection, let the reader also observe the statistics of the population, made up of no less than one hundred and twenty different tribes or nations, divided by blood and parentage from the different stocks of the Indian, the negro and the white, into more than twenty-two castes, with only one million persons of pure white blood, to six million five hundred and twenty-six thousand Indians, negroes and mulattos; and nearly seven millions, out of an aggregate population of seven millions and a half, who are unable to read or write! When he has considered these startling facts, let him turn to the statistics of the army and the church-the two dominant influences in Mexico-and he will have no difficulty in understanding how ambition and corruption may rule and ruin such a wretched population. He will discover that, at the bottom of all the misery of the country, are to be found ever the soldier and the priest; and that, from the days of Cortez to the present, the sword has never won peace for Mexico, nor the church brought a blessing. The army is recruited by lassoing the miserable Indians and peons, like beasts, and dragging them into its ranks, while its commands are sought by those of white blood who are too lazy or too aspiring to work, or are bestowed by successful concoctors of pronunciamentos, as the reward for service rendered or pledged. The army, thus recruited and officered, rules the country. It sets up and it pulls down. The whole procession of political events in Mexico-the change of systems and the elevation or debasement of rulers-is a sort of pompous melo-dramatic performance, or rather, a grand national game of monte, in which, with their magnificent land spread out before them as a table, upheld by its mountain giants, and with the millions of their ill-fated countrymen gathered around as spectators, the ambitious and corrupt gamble for power; and so, by the turn of a card or the fall of the dice, the government of seven millions of people passes from trickster to trickster.

"It is, moreover, a historical fact," says Mr. Mayer, that the Mexican church does not confine itself to matters of faith; but, as the richest national proprietor, (its swollen wealth amounting to near one hundred millions of dollars,) and as the comptroller of conscience, by virtue of the constitution, has constantly quitted the cloister, to fight in the arena of politics. Nor was its weapon weak, for it was armed with superstition. Wielding the bolts of spiritual

thunder, in a nation in which no other religion is tolerated or known, possessing the power of discovery by confession, and of control by penance, excommunication, anathemas, and ecclesiastical interdicts; ruling the soul without appeal, and grasping the purse; it will at once be seen what a powerful element of influence such an institution became, when wielded by a single head. If the masses would prey upon the church, it was the policy of the church to support the army; if the people desired to destroy the army, it was the interest of the army to support a church which could control by conscience, or bribe by money, the miscalled representatives of the people. With force and superstition thus welded together by interest, the representative system could expect but little favour from these two important divisions of the white race."

And now, in conclusion, we ask the reader's attention to the following striking summary, by our author, of the present political condition of this ill-fated country:

"We have heretofore shown, by the laws of nature, that Mexico ought to enjoy a controlling influence in the affairs of the world. And yet, almost three centuries and a half have rolled by since Cortez planted the Spanish banner on the palaces of Tenochtitlean, and still the question may be asked, whether the region is more progressive under republican and royal rule than under Aztec sway? The world has advanced in commerce, manufactures, science, literature and arts; but Mexico has remained comparatively fixed, in the midst of a stagnant semi-civilization. She has not exhibited a true warlike character, either in her domestic broils or in her opposition to a foreign invader, though her soil has been converted into a camp for forty years. She has confessed her manifold errors, by her indemnities and her diplomacy, though she has contrived to invite quarrels, discussions and affronts, by an egregious demeanour towards sojourners in her territory. A religious country, by the protective sanction of all her constitutions, she denies the right of conscientious worship to all who come within her borders. With a military police, and an immense array of judicial officers, her cities and highways are thronged with felons, while the disputes of her citizens linger undetermined for years in her courts. Her domestic markets are dear, and she has but little to spare for foreign commerce, though her soil is extraordinarily fertile, and her climate yields the fruits and grains of the temperate and tropical zones. Throned on mines, she is a borrower at exorbitant usury. Washed by the two great oceans of the globe, her mariners are fishermen, and her vessels skiffs. Boasting of faith, she is without credit. At peace with mankind, and fortified by nature, she is forced to maintain an army, either to protect her from herself, or to bribe the

innumerable remnants of her military politicians into peace. Endowed with a constitution and enjoying the name of a republic, she beholds that constitution violated or overthrown by her army, without even demanding the consent of the people. Vaunting, in the most grandiloquent language, her intelligence, glory and resources, she exhibits not a single evidence of that patriotic unity and order that would entitle her to domestic confidence or public respect. Owning an extensive territory, which is attractive not only for its essential qualities but for its magnificent beauty and grandeur, she has drawn to her shores, since the conquest, only a million of white men. Impoverished, haughty, uneducated, defiant, bigoted, disputatious, without financial credit, beaten in arms, far behind the age in mechanical progress or social civilization, and loaded with debt, Mexico presents a spectacle, in the nineteenth century, which moves the compassion of reflective men, even if it does not provoke the cupidity of other races, to wrest from her weak grasp a region whose value she neither comprehends nor developes."

A sad spectacle, indeed! Where are we to look for the means of extrication from this vicious entanglement? The press, in Mexico, is not to be relied on, for it has disappointed its warmest advocates. The number of pure civil patriots, men of letters, professional characters, merchants, and proprietors, who look truly to the elevation of the country, are too small in number to cope with success against the combined forces of the army and the church, the hosts of officials, and the swarms of corrupt and intriguing civilians, who look only to personal aggrandizement. "In Mexico," says Francisco Lerdo, in his considerations upon the social and political condition of his country, in 1847, " in Mexico there neither is, nor can there ever be, what is called national spirit, because there is no nation.' We commend to such of the candid minds of Mexico as agree with Lerdo, in his undeniable conclusion, the following suggestions, which we quote from the volume we have been reviewing, and with which we shall conclude our paper:

"The obvious policy of Mexico, under existing circumstances, is to exhibit a firm, constitutional, orderly, peaceful aspect, which, together with her manifold allurements of soil, climate, and geographical position, will gradually attract to her shores the multitudes who are seeking a home in the New World. Meritorious emigrants will not populate Mexico until she demonstrates her capacity for order and security; and, without these accessions, Mexico never will,