Is there hopeful reliance, then, upon another power which is controlled by a portion of the educated whites? The Liberty of the Press, in Mexico has disappointed its warmest advocates. An instrument which should ever be used for the enlightenment of the multitude has been employed only to demoralize and deceive it. Instead of attacking bravely all abuses of administration and all international prejudices, or weaknesses; instead of holding the executive departments to strict accountability before the chambers and the people; instead of displaying frankly the vital interests and materials of social reorganization, and thus contributing to the common prosperity and peace of the country, the periodical press of Mexico, with few honorable exceptions, has fostered the meanest passions and hatreds of the ignorant masses and has betrayed public opinion by trafficking with or truckling to the men or the classes who live by public abuses and disorder.[42] Instead of checking and thwarting the interference of the church in civil affairs, it has stood mute or appalled before the ecclesiastical power. If there is no reliance, therefore, on the press, what available trust may be reposed in the pure, civil patriots, men of letters, professional characters, merchants and proprietors? The slender numbers of this class, compared with the army, church, Empleados or government _employées_, and intriguing civilians connected either with the state in its various departments of _finance_, or with the press, at once deprive it of equality in influence. In all the turns of fortune in Mexico, these men have, hitherto, never been able to command the country for any length of time so as to give a permanent beneficial direction to public affairs, and we may, therefore, readily agree with Lerdo in believing that his country possesses no elements of nationality. He might have gone further in his analysis, and declared that there was no nationality because there was no PEOPLE; for who will dignify with that republican name such discordant and heterogeneous materials of races, characters, politics and purposes. A PEOPLE is not a mere aggregation of human beings. A nation, in the true sense of nationality, is only a great family, for whose strength and power it is necessary that all its individual members should be intimately united by the bonds of interest, sympathy and affection. Such a nation may form a government, but it is difficult for a government to form such a nation. And this was the peculiarly fortunate position of our North American states at the period of Independence, for we had no political and social revolution to effect. Our people and our government grew up together. At the close of the war the United States were poor. The military men had enjoyed no revenue from their services but personal honor. They were badly fed, paid and clothed. There was no rich, ready made prize to be seized by ambitious or avaricious men in the gorged treasury of a nation. All were