of Cortez
getting drowned out at Iztapalapan, a point above the level of
the city of Mexico, by suggesting that _perhaps_ an earthquake
may have changed the face of the valley. But, unfortunately,
Iztapalapan was the southern support of the old Indian levee
(_calzado_), built to keep the water off of the city of Mexico in
seasons of heavy rains.

[61] Though the richest ecclesiastical quasi-corporation in the
world, your ears are constantly saluted with solicitations for
contributions to the impoverished Church.

[62] _Colleccion de Leyes_, p. 184.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The Church of Mexico.--Its present Condition and Power.--The Number
of the "Religios."--The Wealth of the Church.--The Money-power
of the Church.--The Power of Assassination.--Educating the
People robs the Priest.--Making and adoring Images.--The Progress
downward.

The Catholic Church of Mexico is a peculiar institution. Its historical
antecedents have been considered in previous chapters in connection
with other subjects. Men no longer whisper their unbelief with
trembling, nor have they any longer to dread inquisitorial fires if
they refuse to pay tithes to the bishop, or if they neglect to bestow
rich gifts upon the priests. Still the Church survives the losses of
this important engine of piety, and continues unmodified by passing
events. In the midst of revolutions it stands unchanged, a relic of the
last century. It stands like a great showman's wagon from which the
horses have been detached, and children, great and small, are collected
around to look at its images. Unfortunately, there is an abundance of
full-grown children in a country where, for centuries, a combination of
spiritual and temporal despotisms have dwarfed the intellects of men
down to the standard of a toy-shop religion, which had long rejoiced in
crushing the human intellect, while it disdained to enlighten the
humblest understanding.

[Illustration: MEXICAN PRIESTS TRAVELING.]

Mexico is the only Catholic country in which the Church has remained
unchanged during all the revolutions of the last half century. The
French infidel armies, and the wars and revolutions that followed the
French invasions, overturned the Church of Spain and Italy, so that the
Church organization that now exists in those peninsulas is a new
creation. Not so in Mexico. Its revolution was for the purpose of
saving the privileges of the