that they can hardly be confidered as having advanced beyond the infancy of civil life. View of the inftitutions and manners of each. After this general obfervation concerning the most fingular and diftinguifhing circumftance in the ftate of both the great empires in America, I fhall endeavour to give fuch a view of the conftitution and interior police of each, as may enable us to afcertain their place in the political fcale, to allot them their proper ftation between the rude tribes in the New World, and the polifhed ftates of the ancient, and to determine how far they had rifen above the former, as well as how much they fell below the latter. Imperfe& information concerning thofe of Mexico. Mexico was firft fubjected to the Spanish crown. But our acquaintance with its laws and manners is not, from that circumftance, more complete. What I have rema ked concerning the defective and inaccurate information on which we muft rely with refpect to the condition and cuftoms of the favage tribes in America, may be applied likewife to our knowledge of the Mexican empire. Cortes, and the rap c'ous adventurers who accompanied him, had not leifure or capacity to enrich either civil or natural hiftory with new obfervations. They undertook their expedition in queft of one ob ject, and feemed hardly to have turned their eyes towards any other. Or if during fome fhort interval of tranquillity, when the occupations of war ceafed and the ardour of plunder was fufpended, the inftitutions and manners of the people whom they had invaded drew their attention, the inquiries of illiterate foldiers were conducted with fo little fagacity and precifion, that the accounts given by them of the policy and order eftablished in the Mexican monarchy are fuperficial, confufed, and inexplicable. It is rather from incidents which they relate occafionally, than from their own deductions and remarks, that we are enabled to form fome idea of the genius and manners of that people. The obscurity in which the ignorance of its conquerors involved the annals of Mexico, was augmented by the superftition of those who fucceeded them. As the memory of past events was preferved among the Mexicans by figures painted on fkins, on cotton cloth, ΟΙ on the bark of trees, the early miffionaries, unable to comprehend their meaning and ftruck with their uncouth forms, conceived them to be monuments of idolatry which ought to be deftroyed, in order to facilitate the converfion of the Indians. In obedience to an edit iffued by Juan de Zummaraga, a Franciscan monk, the first bishop of Mexico, thofe records of the ancient Mexican ftory which could be collected were committed to the flames. In confequence of this fanatical zeal of the monks who firft vifited. New Spain, and which their fucceffors foon began to lament, whatever knowledge of remote events fuch rude monuments contained was almost entirely loft, and no information remained concerning the ancient revolutions and policy of the empire, but what was derived from tradition, or from fome fragments of their hiftorical paintings that escaped the barbarous refearches of Zummaraga. d) From the experience of all nations it is manifeft, that the memory of paft tranfactions can neither be long preferved, nor be tranfmitted with any fidelity, by tradition. The Mexican paintings, which are fuppofed to have ferved as annals of their empire, are few in number, and of ambiguous meaning. Thus, Thus, amidft the uncertainty of the former, and the obfcurity of the latter, we muft glean what intelligence can be collected from the fcanty materials fcattered in the Spanish writers. Origin of rhe Mexican monarchy. According to the account of the Mexicans. themselves their empire was not of long duration. Their country, as they relate, was originally poffeffed, rather than peopled, by fmall independent tribes, whofe mode of life and manners. refembled thofe of the rudest favage d) Acofta, lib. vi. c. 7. Torquem, Proem. lib ii. lib. i. 6. 6. lib. xiv. e. 6. favages which we have defcribed. But about a period correfponding to the beginning of the tenth century in the Chriftianaera, several tribes moved in fucceffive migrations from unknown regions towards the north and northweft and fettled in different provinces of Anabac, the ancient name of New Spain. These, more civilized than the original inhabitants, began to form them to the arts of focial life. At length, towards the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Mexicans, a people more polifhed than any of the former, advanced from the border of the Californian gulf, and took poffeffion of the plains adjacent to a great lake near the centre of the country. After refiding there about fifty years they founded a town, fince diftinguifhed by the name of Mexico, which from humble beginnings foon grew to be the moft confiderable city in the New World. The Mexicans, long after they were established in their new poffeffions, continued, like other martial tribes in America, unacquainted with regal dominion, and were governed in peace, and conducted in war by fuch as were entitled to preeminence by their wisdom or their valour. But among them, as in other ftates whofe power and territories become extenfive, the fupreme authority centred at laft in a fingle perfon; and when the Spaniards under Cortes invaded the country, Montezuma was the ninth monarch ROBERTSON Vol. III. L in order who had fwayed the Mexican fceptre, not by hereditary right, but by election. Very recent, Such is the traditional tale of the Mexicans concerning the progrefs of their own empire. According to this, its duration was very fhort. From the firft migration of their parent tribe, they can reckon little more than three hundred years. From the establishment of monarchical government, not above a hundred and thirty years, according to one account, e) or a hundred and ninety-feven, according to another computation, f) had elapfed. If, on one hand, we fuppofe the Mexican ftate to have been of higher antiquity, and to have fubfifted during fuch a length of time as the Spanish accounts of its civilization would naturally lead us to conclude, it is difficult to conceive how, among a people who poffeffed the art of recording events by pictures, and who confidered it as an effential part of their national education, to teach their children to repeat the hiftorical songs which celebrated the exploits of their ancestors, g) the knowledge of paft tranfactions should be fo flender and limited. If, on the other hand, we adopt their own fyftem with refpect to the antiquities of their e) Acoft. Hift. lib. vii. c. 8, &c. |