judges, notaries, or clerks. In proportion as the litigants are wealthy, or as it is necessary that their cause should be speedily decided, so are the greedy officials slow in preparing it for a final hearing and decree. The maxim in Mexico is--"_mas vale una mala composicion que un buen pleito_,"--a bad compromise is better than a good law suit. "There are men,"--said a member of the Mexican cabinet to congress, in 1830,--"who exercise the right of life and death over their equals, whom the arm of justice does not venture to reach; and, thus, as the bonds of society are effectually dissolved, individuals owe security, rather to their personal power, than to the protection they have a right to expect from the laws." There are many criminals throughout the republic who have long offended with impunity while every species of chicanery has been taken advantage of to secure their life and liberty. Witnesses are sometimes intimidated, false oaths sworn, and terrible menaces whispered in the ears of the timid; nor are these base threats always left unexecuted if the victim is finally condemned and punished. * * * * * In the space of six months, during the end of 1841 and beginning of 1842, several horrible assassinations were perpetrated in Mexico. An old Spanish porter was slain and cruelly mutilated in his dwelling, in the capital. So scandalous a deed excited universal indignation. The judicial authorities of the capital ordered rigorous proceedings against the culprit, but, after the case had been tried, and the murderer condemned to lose his life, he was pardoned in consequence of a threat that he would make important or disagreeable revelations if the sentence were executed. Another Spaniard,--a planter of standing in his district,--was murdered by the servants of a neighboring _haciendado_, with whom he had a dispute in regard to water-rights. The cause was tried, and the instigator and his tools were imprisoned. Yet the arm of justice was withheld by intrigue and corruption. Another Spanish planter, in the south,--a physician by profession, and a man incapable of injuring any one,--was foully killed by a band of Indians, nine of whom were shot for the crime. These miserable wretches had been but the instruments of higher criminals who were well known to the public, nevertheless they were too powerful to be made responsible for their shameful crime. At Tacubaya, in 1842, an English gentleman and his wife, whilst indulging in an evening walk were assassinated and brutally mutilated. But justice was for a long time foiled in its retributive efforts. Nor is it likely that the culprits would ever have expiated their guilt on the scaffold had not the foreign population loudly demanded, and liberally paid for their conviction. In 1839, the Mexican judges gave a striking example of firmness in the execution of a capital sentence, decreed in a case which lasted four years against a colonel of