or five generals, forming a united system, oppress the country, and, without altering the republican forms, everything proceeds under their inspirations. Foreign businessmen, who can have no other interests than their profits, which depend on the state of tranquility or slavery, favor this system to the extent they can unite with Spaniards who desire the same, and it is very common to see many liberals from Europe in Mexico enrolled in the ranks of the oppressors. This explains the mystery of why some newspapers, even those of the party of liberty in Europe, make apologies for the military governments of America. Receiving communication and news from overseas agents, and those agents always speaking in the sense of their profits and interests, it is clear that the military party must be considered most useful to their speculation.
But one must not lose sight of the principles I have set forth on the well-known facts to which I have also referred. The greatest and most dangerous errors of those who direct public affairs is not to think about the generations that will be following, nor about their advances and aspirations, and in no place is this error susceptible of easier realization than in the new states of America. From the year 1808 until 1830, that is to say, in the space of a generation, such is the change of ideas, opinions, factions and interests that has occurred, that it is enough to turn a respected and recognized form of government upside down and have seven million inhabitants pass from despotism and arbitrariness to the most liberal theories. Only the customs and habits are transmitted in all movements; actions and continuous examples have not been able to change, because how can abstract doctrines make the course of life suddenly change? Consequently we have in contradiction to the theoretical systems of established governments those powerful agents of human life, and the founders of republican forms will not be able to deny that they have only dressed, with the clothing of declarations of rights and principles, the old man, the same body or confluence of prejudices, the
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mass organized and shaped by previous institutions. What have they done to substitute usages and customs analogous to the new order of things?
There is, then, a continual clash among the doctrines that are professed, the institutions adopted, the principles established; and among the abuses sanctified, the customs that dominate, semifeudal rights that are respected; among the national sovereignty, equality of political rights, freedom of the press, popular government, and intervention of the armed force, laws of privilege, religious intolerance, and landowners of immense territories. Might the conserving principles of any social order whatsoever at least be made harmonious? If a federal system, which is what seems to me most suitable to those countries, is adopted by conviction, by rationality, by a judgment formed after profound reflection, not for that reason should the system of the neighbors of the North be copied exactly, nor, much less, literal articles from the Spanish Constitution. The height of absurdity and the absence of all good sense is the sanction of laws of privilege and privileges in a popular government. Let there be established an ecclesiastical, military, and civil aristocracy if one wants or believes it useful to the good of the country; let the republics of Genoa or Venice be imitated if it is possible; then might there be laws of privilege and privileged classes; might there be laws for each hierarchy or for each corporation or each person if it is judged suitable. But a constitution formed on the foundations of the broadest liberty, on the model of that of the North Americans, conserving a state religion without tolerance for another; privileged troops and military leaders in civil commands; convents of religious of both sexes instituted in conformity with the canons of the Roman Church; three million citizens with no property at all nor no known means of subsistence; half a million with political rights to vote in elections without knowing how to read or write; military tribunals judging certain privileged cases; finally, all the incentives of an unlimited liberty and the absence of all social guarantees, cannot fail to produce a perpetual war among such heterogeneous factions and such opposing interests. Make disappear that confluence of anomalies that mutually contradict each other. I will conclude this discourse presenting to the readers the state of income, expenses, and resources of New Spain, omitting minute details that form the object of my work.
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