The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 28, February, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Philosophy
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 28, February, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
construct a government without recognizing a truth which is universal,
though not great, will find that his structure can better be compared to
the Syrian flower than to the Syrian cedar. The age of Model Republics
has passed away even from dreams.
We have called the party in Mexico which represents a certain fixed
principle the clerical party; but we have done so more for the sake of
convenience, and from deference to ordinary usage, than because the
words accurately describe the Mexican reactionists. Conservative party
would, perhaps, be the better name; and the word _conservative_ would
not be any more out of place in such a connection, or more perverted
from its just meaning, than it is in England and the United States. The
clergy form, as it were, the core of this party, and give to it a shape
and consistency it could not have without their alliance. Yet, if we
can believe the Mexican already quoted, and who is apparently well
acquainted with the subject on which he has sought to enlighten the
English mind, the party that is opposed to the Liberals is quite as much
in favor of freedom as are the latter, and is utterly hostile to either
religious or political despotism. After objecting to the course of those
Mexicans who found a political pattern in the United States, and showing
the evils that have followed from their awkward imitation, he says,--"No
wonder, then, that some men, actuated by the love of their country,
convinced of the danger to Mexican nationality from such a state of
things, seeing clearly through all these American intrigues, and
determined to oppose them by all the means in their power, should have
formed long ago, and as soon as the first symptoms of anarchy and the
cause of them became apparent, the centre of a party, which, having
necessarily to combat the so-called 'Liberal party,' or, in other words,
the American army, is accused of being a retrograde, absolutist,
clerical party, bent on nothing but the reestablishment of the
Inquisition and the 'worst of the worst times.' Nothing, however, is
less true. That party contains in its bosom the most enlightened and the
most respectable part of the community, men who have not as yet to learn
the advantages and benefits of civil and religious liberty, and who
would be happy indeed to see liberty established in their country; but
liberty under the law, rational and wise liberty, liberty compatible
with order and tranquillity, liberty, in a word, for good purposes,--not
that savage, licentious, and tyrannical liberty, the object of which is
anarchy, so well answering the private ends of its partisans, and, above
all, the iniquitous views of an ambitious neighbor.... For the present,
no doubt, their object is limited to obtain the triumph over their
enemies, who are the enemies of Mexico, and to put down anarchy, as the
first and most pressing want of the country, no matter under what form
of government or by what means. In pursuance of such an object, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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