condition is observed by the traveller in
all Spanish-American republics, and it seems to the foreign observer
that the practical and plodding class of workers and trade-makers is
insufficiently represented, bearing in mind the large amount of
scientific and theoretical leadership. This is in accordance with the
dictates of caste, inherited from Spain. The upper class have always
had Indians to wait upon them, and a Quixotic tendency to the despising
of manual labour has naturally resulted, as among the leisured class of
any other country. Any occupation that cannot be performed in the
habiliments of the frock-coat and silk hat seems derogatory to the
Spanish-American, and, filtering down through all the strata of society
above the _peones_ this sentiment has the effect of keeping the young
men in the cities and robbing the country of a race of intelligent
peasants of white descent. The Spanish-American youth of the poorer
class prefers to pass the days behind a counter selling cashmeres and
silks to bargaining _senoritas_ rather than to take up work on the
land, which urgently requires more distributed and intelligent
cultivation.

The young Mexican of the upper class cares little for sport as
understood by the Anglo-Saxon, and the strenuous games of the young
Briton or American, or the hard work of British sport, are alien to his
ease-loving nature. It is true that tennis and football and even polo
are played to a limited extent by enthusiastic young men in the
capital, who have followed the example of British or American
residents, but it is not to be expected that these alien games could be
grafted upon a different stock. Horsemanship is, of course, a natural
pastime; but this has nothing in common with the pastime of the English
hunting-fields, notwithstanding that a certain class of Mexicans are
exceedingly famous as horsemen and have no superiors in the world in
this art, in some respects.

As regards political distinction and career, the system obtaining in
Spanish-American countries--like that of the United States--causes a
change every few years of almost the whole official body, from
President and Cabinet Ministers downwards. This has advantages and
disadvantages. It certainly creates a large and generally capable
governing class or clique. It is rare in the society of the capitals of
these countries to find prominent men who, at one time or other, have
not been Cabinet Ministers or held other important Sta