One of the direct results of this popular ignorance is, that the conduct of affairs has virtually passed out of the hands of the people. To a considerable extent, it may be affirmed that the strifes which divide and desolate Mexico do not rise to the dignity of civil wars. They are not so much the conflicts of a divided people as the disgraceful brawls of ambitious demagogues and their adherents. Every traveller notes with astonishment how little these great changes, which ought to stir to its depths the national heart, ruffle even the surface of society,--how the great mass sit undisturbed, while events big with importance are transacted before their eyes,--how a few ambitious leaders, or a few military chieftains, with their mercenary bands, are permitted to uphold or betray, to advance or trample under foot, great principles which with us excite every mind and arouse every heart. We believe it to be strictly true that a large portion of the Mexican people have not enough mental and moral activity to take an interest of any kind in these desolating wars,--much less to exercise that repressing influence by which the criminal ambition of the few must bow to the rights of the many. There could not be a worse sign. Popular ignorance, therefore, leading to popular apathy, must be put down among the influential causes of Mexican sorrows. * * * * * A third cause is that indifference to blood which appears to be characteristic of the Mexican people, or at least of that portion of them who have concerned themselves with public commotions. Some terrible elements have entered into this Mexican stock. The Spaniard, one of its sources, has written his name in blood in the history both of the Old and the New World. Whether hunting out the remnants of the unhappy Moriscos from the fastnesses of their native hills,--or torturing the Jews in the dungeons of his Inquisition,--or with lust and murder filling to the brim the cup of horror and misery for the captive cities of Holland,--or exterminating, in the pitiless labor of the mines, the peaceful aborigines of San Domingo,--or with Cortes putting to slaughter a whole city on mere suspicion,--everywhere the Spaniard has recorded great deeds with a pen of iron dipped in blood. And the Aztec, the other source of that stock, had, if we are to credit his conqueror, a cruel and merciless side to his character, which made him the peer of his oppressor.