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QUARTA PARTE.

CAPÍTULO 1.

            A POWER and a terror in the world has the word Sacrilege ever been. They who can use it with effect have already won their cause. To be effective, it requires only faith on the part, not of those who use it, but of those against whom it is used. There are indications that the particular direction of the religious instinct which has hitherto given to the term all its force, is undergoing a modification. There are many minds now for which the term no longer possesses a meaning or implies any distinct idea. The charge of ‘Sacrilege,’ once worst of crimes, is falling into disuse and oblivion as an engine of terror.

            In the belief that man is competent to make gifts to the Deity, but unable to recall them without incurring the utmost degree of the Divine wrath, consisted the energy of the terrible phrase. In the rise and growth of the idea that all things whatsoever are necessarily and inalienably the Divine property, inasmuch as God is, by His very definition, the universal Creator, Sustainer, and Possessor; and that, as man can neither add to nor detract from the sum of His wealth, what is meant by man’s giving to God is that he gives to what he deems his own best service; – herein consists the canker that is threatening the very idea of Sacrilege with decay.

            If it be an onward step for humanity when, ceasing to draw a broad distinction between the Universe of Being and its creating and sustaining Principle, man comes to identify God with his own best, it must also be an advance when he deems

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that which is most for the service of God to be also that which is most for his own good.

            Unfortunately, much difference of opinion exists in the world as to what is most for the service of God, and, consequently, of man. In few countries, probably, has this difference of opinion led to such calamitous results as, of late years, in Mexico. The Church property there had been enormous. The value of that which still remained in 1863, after years of anarchy and revolution, was estimated at nearly forty millions sterling. Of this fund the distribution was claimed, on one side by the priests, who demanded the reversion of the act of 1859, by which they had been deprived of it; and, on the other, by the Mexican population, as represented by President Juarez. The former were a small minority, of alien blood, and owing spiritual allegiance to a foreign potentate. The latter constituted the nation.

            The rough-and-ready manner in which Juarez was accustomed to assert the national right to this property, has already been shown. It had probably never occurred to him that a Divine Sanction, a Sanction not of Earth, was claimed by ‘the Church,’ as the priests were wont to call themselves, for its possessions. Probably no member or representative of that body ever thought of using such an argument to him. It was one that might have weight with peasants who knew nothing of history, political or ecclesiastical, and who were accustomed to hear so much of man’s duty to God, the saints, and the priests, as to have but very dim and confused notions of man’s duty to man. But Juarez, though sprung from this class, was so far removed from it in his intellectual acquirements, that to him the Church in Mexico was but an organisation of foreign adventurers for the accumulation of wealth by any means, fair or foul; and he charged upon it a continuation of the rapacity which had marked the first Spanish conquerors. In his eyes the wealthier and more powerful the Church became, the poorer and more degraded was his own race.

            It was not to be expected that his view of the matter should be accepted by the clerical party in Mexico. Neither was it likely to prevail on this side of the Atlantic, inasmuch as it was from this side that what Juarez regarded as but an association for the subjugation and plunder of his country on pretence of religion, derived its origin and support. To the patriot-president his country alone was sacred. For him sacrilege would consist

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in leaving an atom of its wealth in the hands of the Church, at least so long as it acknowledged a foreign sway.

            It was unfortunate for Mexico and for its popular ruler that the first French Revolution had never completed itself. Paris, indeed, had been emancipated, but the provinces remained subject to the Church. This Church was a branch of that which claimed exclusive supremacy in Mexico; and upon it the French Emperor in great measure relied for the maintenance of his authority throughout the greater portion of his dominions. He had, moreover, taken for his Empress one who was bound to the Church in Mexico by the double tie of religion and race. It was scarcely possible for one, placed like Napoleon III, to decline a chance of consolidating his own power by conciliating the Church at home, or of pleasing his beautiful Empress by espousing the cause of her religion and race in Mexico. Besides, did he not owe some amends to Roman Pontiff and Austrian Cæsar for the part he had recently played in Italy?

            When it is said that the question which had for years afflicted Mexico with civil war was a religions one, it can only be meant that it turned upon the point whether or not Mexico was to continue bound soul and body, lands and goods, to the officials of the Romish Church. The populace, being grossly ignorant, was naturally also grossly superstitious. Not through any identity of religious sympathy with Juarez was he accepted as a champion. It was the race that he represented. Even the insurrections which had in former times taken place against Spain, were headed by priests, and had for their object the maintenance, not the abolition, of Catholicism. They were grounded on the belief that Spain was conspiring to betray the Church by delivering the country to England.

            But while the Mexicans are bigoted Catholics, they are far from being orthodox ones; that is, putting the capital out of the question. It had been a vast satisfaction to Maynard to find himself, in the course of his antiquarian researches, brought upon traces of the ancient ritual of the Aztecs. Guided by a variety of considerations, by their religious, literary, and architectural remains, as well as by their own distinct traditions, he had been led to believe that the same race which had spread westward and southward from the Hindoo Kúsh, had also sent a detachment by way of North-eastern Asia to the American continent, which had gradually worked its way down into

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Mexico, subduing or amalgamating with the aboriginal inhabitants and assimilating the local religions to their own.

            Whether or not Juarez contemplated retreating so far upon the old tracks as to endeavour to restore the national faith of his own people together with their independence, it would be premature to conjecture; but he certainly did not hesitate to inflict as much damage upon the fabric imported from Europe as was consistent with the maintenance of his authority.

            Thus the peculiar views of the President combined with the exigencies of the State to make the antagonism between him and the clerigos complete. The charge of ‘robbing God’ fell harmless upon a man who did not care to deprive it of its sting by devoting even a portion of the property reclaimed from the Church, to such ‘giving to the poor’ as might fairly be accounted a lending to the Lord.’ Even if he had so devoted it, there is little reason to suppose that the rancour of those upon whom restitution was thus forced, would have been mitigated.

            A traveller who, venturing to penetrate to the city of Mexico in the autumn of 1863, was in possession of the clue to the complicated intrigues which had led to the entry of the French into the capital in the summer just past, was not likely to be at a loss to comprehend the difficulties of the position in which all parties stood towards each other. Probably, of all who were concerned, the task of Juarez was the simplest. Driven from his capital, he had only to fight against the invaders whenever he found an opportunity; and when he had no opportunity of fighting, to wait and look for one. While Juarez was thus fighting and waiting, the French were both fighting and endeavouring to contrive an arrangement whereby they could honourably violate their engagement not to force any government on the Mexican people,’ by making the election of the Archduke Maximilian appear to be a voluntary act.

            Under the French General, Forey, the clerical party, headed by the Archbishop of Mexico and backed by a few of the ‘notables,’ had formally invited the Austrian Prince to assume the crown; a proceeding that would be nearly paralleled were the bishops of the late Irish Church establishment and a few ultra-Protestant representative peers, representing a few other and non-representative peers, to take upon themselves to invite a foreign sovereign to become king of Ireland. Maximilian himself saw the absurdity of the proceeding,

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and his hesitation led to France ‘accepting the proposal as but a first indication of the wishes of the country,’ and entering upon a new campaign for the purpose of collecting the suffrages of the provinces. This meant fighting, and forcing upon the whole of Mexico the authority hitherto established by the French only in the capital and over the route to Vera Cruz.

            This was the juncture in October, when Forey was superseded by General Bazaine. Such was the energy and rapidity of the new commander’s movements that the forces formed for the defence of the republic under the Juarist generals were overthrown in all directions; and in six weeks the desired assent to the Archduke’s election, obtained from the principal towns.

            It was during this campaign that Edmund Noel arrived in the city of Mexico. The errand on which he was bent was of a nature that compelled him to pay close heed to the political situation and prospects. He had come to Mexico in that troubled time to endeavour to dispose of the property, now owned solely by Margaret and himself, at Dolóres. It was little that he cared for himself in the matter; but it was her all. James Maynard had, to everybody’s surprise, left a Will, and by that he left to Margaret ‘whatever he might be found to posses, should he at any time chance to die.’

            It was evident to Noel that the prospect of selling mining property in Mexico advantageously for a long time to come, depended entirely on the issue of the then pending campaign. If the French were successful, peace and prosperity would the time be in the ascendant. If they failed, there was little hope of tranquillity under the republic. In the latter event his last hope of a liberal purchaser lay in Juarez himself, to whose friendship for ‘Don Maynardo’ he determined to appeal. A slice of the Church’s property, it occurred to Noel, would be very nice and very appropriate for such a saint as Margaret.

            Edmund reached Mexico to find the commander-in-chief absent on his momentous expedition, and the city torn by the dissensions of the Council of the Regency that had been appointed to govern in the interval before Maximilian’s arrival. The three members might have got on pretty well had they all been laymen; for its president, the refugee Almonte, was equal to governing a dominion consisted of a single city, of which the inhabitants were mostly of his own way of thinking;

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and the old General, Solas, made a point of agreeing with him. But the remaining member was a no less important and holy personage than the Archbishop of Mexico himself; and his intractability and intrigues in the interest of his order were so glaring and mischievous that, rather than abolish the Council altogether, his colleagues determined to abolish him. It was accordingly signified to Monsenor Bastida, by the abrupt removal of his guard of honour from the archiepiscopal palace, that he was no longer recognised as a member of the Council of the Regency. Matters went on more quietly after this; and the intelligence that soon followed of the complete success of the campaign, gave Noel reason to believe that the expected revival of tranquillity and trade, might enable him to dispose of the mine without accepting a particle of Church property at the hands of Juarez. A merely temporary success for the French would, he considered, answer his purpose; but his sympathies continued to be with the republic.

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