as defeated. The first king may have
been a fortunate soldier only, but it requires several generations of
royalty to give power to a reigning house, as in old times it required
several descents to give to a man the flavor of genuine nobility. If it
be objected to this, that it is an admission of the power which is
claimed for flunkeyism, we can only meet the charge by saying that there
is much of the flunkey in man, and that whoso shall endeavor to
construct a government without recognizing a truth which is universal,
though not great, will find that his structure can better be compared to
the Syrian flower than to the Syrian cedar. The age of Model Republics
has passed away even from dreams.

We have called the party in Mexico which represents a certain fixed
principle the clerical party; but we have done so more for the sake of
convenience, and from deference to ordinary usage, than because the
words accurately describe the Mexican reactionists. Conservative party
would, perhaps, be the better name; and the word _conservative_ would
not be any more out of place in such a connection, or more perverted
from its just meaning, than it is in England and the United States. The
clergy form, as it were, the core of this party, and give to it a shape
and consistency it could not have without their alliance. Yet, if we
can believe the Mexican already quoted, and who is apparently well
acquainted with the subject on which he has sought to enlighten the
English mind, the party that is opposed to the Liberals is quite as much
in favor of freedom as are the latter, and is utterly hostile to either
religious or political despotism. After objecting to the course of those
Mexicans who found a political pattern in the United States, and showing
the evils that have followed from their awkward imitation, he says,--"No
wonder, then, that some men, actuated by the love of their country,
convinced of the danger to Mexican nationality from such a state of
things, seeing clearly through all these American intrigues, and
determined to oppose them by all the means in their power, should have
formed long ago, and as soon as the first symptoms of anarchy and the
cause of them became apparent, the centre of a party, which, having
necessarily to combat the so-called 'Liberal party,' or, in other words,
the American army, is accused of being a retrograde, absolutist,
clerical party, bent on nothing but the reestablishment of the
Inquisition and the