This, perhaps, is the key of Mexican decadence. The national spirit is centrifugal, if any thing can strictly be called national when citizen is armed against citizen, and when men in civil life and politicians in public life, are constantly seeking to aggrandize themselves either in wealth or power without a thought of loyalty to the constitution which should perpetuate and consolidate national unity of principle and action in spite of all their personal ambitions or party dominations. If we recur to our statistics in the third chapter of this volume we shall find that, out of seven millions six hundred and twenty-six thousand eight hundred and thirty-one inhabitants of the republic, it is calculated that four millions three hundred thousand are Indians, that more than two millions are either mixed bloods or negroes, and only about one million white, while, of the whole population, not many more than seven hundred and forty thousand are to be regarded as either educated or at all instructed! The most numerous class, the large majority of Mexicans,--the Indians,--are not civilized. We make this assertion without qualification. They are _tamed_ and have been comparatively submissive; they are not open idolators and have generally conformed, according to their limited understanding and instruction, to the direction of the Catholic priesthood; but neither this taming nor this conformity, considered relatively to their general demeanor, constitute civilization either under a monarchy or a republic. The Indians, therefore, regarded as a political or social element in a democracy, are not fairly to be valued as integral constituencies of the Mexican _republic_. We have already delineated the character of this class and will not recapitulate the points of sluggish indifference which forbid the hope of its elevation. Less savage than the North American red man and hunter, the Mexican Indian is only dwarfed in energy and in the expression of passion, by the emasculating influence of the climate. In all other respects he resembles the tenant of our western forests and will neither willingly mingle with us, adopt our habits, nor labor for others upon a soil which spontaneously supplies his wants. In his passive state he is content with imitation; in his aroused anger he rushes blindly and vindictively into danger, and is willing to die rather for revenge than for right. Is it not folly then to ask this class to comprehend the representative system? Nor can we justly expect its comprehension and correspondent adherence or practice from the unenlightened Mixed Races, especially when those races do not derive their origin, exclusively, from pure white stocks, but are formed by a medly mosaic of Indian, African, Oriental and Spanish. The hope of Mexico must, therefore, repose in the whites alone; and, on this class we might confidently rely as the nucleus around which future numbers and civilization would gather, if we found them orderly, free, united and