The several social strata, moreover, were jealously kept distinct. The first distinction was that which separated them from foreigners. In the days of Cæsar and Cicero, Rome was master of the world; Rome was the world; were any not of Rome they were barbarians. So it was with Spaniards. To be of Castile was to be the most highly favored of mortals; to be a Spaniard, though not a Castilian, was something to be proud of; to be anything else was most unfortunate. The next distinction was between the Spaniard of pure blood and the Christianized native of foreign origin. In the eyes of the Castilian baptism could not wholly cleanse a Moor or Jew. Moriscos the Church might make; heretics the Inquisition might reconstruct; but all Spain could not make from foreign material a Christian Spaniard of the pure ancient blood. About foreign fashions, foreign inventions, foreign progress, foreign criticism, they cared nothing. And probably nowhere in modern times was this irrational idea of caste carried to such an absurd extent as in the New World. Children of Spanish parentage, born in America, were regarded socially as inferior to children of the same parents who happened to be born in Spain. To be born a Spanish peasant was better than _hidalgo_, or cavalier, with American nativity; for at one time the former, on migrating to America, was entitled by virtue of that fact to the prefix 'Don.' Under the viceroys native Mexicans, though of pure Castilian ancestry, were too often excluded from the higher offices of Church and State; and this notwithstanding that both canonical and civil law, if we may believe Betancur y Figueroa, provided that natives should be preferred in all ecclesiastical appointments from the lightest benefice to the highest prelacy. "But notwithstanding such repeated recommendations," says Robertson, "preferment in almost every different line is conferred on native Spaniards." Mr Ward, English consul at Mexico in 1825-7, affirms that "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 European 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." Truly it was a good thing in those days to be at once 'of Christ' and 'of Spain.' It was positively believed by some that blood flowed in accordance with the majesty of law, and that the quality of one was inferior to the quality of another. The blood of the Indian was held as scarcely more human than the blood of beasts, and was often shed as freely.