hould be tried never died out; and when in 1860 the country was a prey
to civil war between the anti-clericals under the great Juarez and the
Conservative elements, and the interest on the foreign debt was
suspended, a pretext offered for the intervention of France, England,
and Spain in the internal affairs of Mexico, supported by the
Conservative and monarchical parties in the country itself.

The ill-starred ambition of Napoleon III. ended in the sacrifice of a
chivalrous and well-meaning prince, but it effected for Mexico what
fifty years of internal strife had been unable to attain: it produced a
solidarity of Mexican national feeling which has since then welded the
people into a stable and united nation, in no danger henceforward of
falling a prey to foreign ambition or of lapsing into anarchy from its
own dissensions. That this happy end has been attained has been due
mainly to the genius of two men, the greatest of Mexico's sons, who
have in succession appeared at the moment when the national crisis
needed them. To Benito Juarez, the Zapoteca Indian, who held aloft the
banner of Mexican independence against the power of Napoleon's empire,
is due not alone the victory over the invaders but the firm
establishment of a federal constitutional system. Juarez, a lawyer and
a judge, insisted upon the law being supreme, and that ambitious
generals should thenceforward be the servants and not the masters of
the State.

The great Juarez died in 1872, and for the last thirty-three years,
with a break of one short interval only, Porfirio Diaz has been master
of Mexico, a benevolent autocrat, an emperor in all but name, governing
with a wise moderation which recognises that a country situated as
Mexico is, and with a population as yet far from homogeneous or
civilised in the European sense, must of necessity be led patiently and
diplomatically along the road of progress. To reach the goal of
material and moral elevation at which Diaz aims, stability of
institutions and of directors is the first need; and the President has
been re-elected seven times by his fellow citizens because they, as
well as he, can see that his brain and his hand must guide the mighty
engine of advance that he has set in motion.

The effects of this policy have already been prodigious, and there is
probably no country on earth that has made strides so gigantic as
Mexico in the last thirty years. It is due mainly to the labours of
Diaz that the natio