Moore, off Campeachy, silenced ten times his naval force, and compelled them to seek shelter - in fine, let us go back to Mina's expedition in Mexico, and follow him through his bloody campaign, and nowhere will we find that the Mexicans have stood the charge of the North Americans and the descendants of the English, and good reasons teach that they must be regenerated before they ever will. A small knowledge of the Mexican's raising, his habits of life, and his mode of enlisting, will prove this assertion.

The Mexican army is composed of the veriest dregs of their population, having been raised in the most abject degradation and slavery, without ever being permitted the use of fire-arms: they are forcibly taken from the criminals' prisons, the unprotected Péons, and the houseless leperos. These wretched creatures are tied together like brutes, without their will, and without the power of remonstrance, when they are forced into quartels, where for many months they are drilled like machines, then placed in uniform, and given a bright musket, which his greatest punishment is to be made [395] to fire. In the Mexican army we see no target-firing, and upon inspection days the inside of the gun is not looked to, when it is the especial duty of the soldier to keep the outside bright. Their army, with a gay, peacock uniform and bright arms, under the exciting notes of the bugle, has, to an inexperienced eye, a formidable appearance. The soldier goes through the "manual" with a stiff, uniform, machine-like motion, while the company and regimental drill is taught as horses are taught to perform tricks which they cannot know the meaning of. Such soldiers, thus recruited, are called volunteers, and the army the "defenders of liberty!"

With such mockery of truth, such destitution of principle, is it to be expected that such an army can cope with freemen, who in the nursery are taught that they have no superiors and but few equals - who go forth from their mother's watchfulness with the rifle in their hands, and by the time they are entitled to breeches, emulate their bold sires both at the target and in horsemanship? While the chief accomplishment of the Mexican is in throwing a rope over a pig's head or a mule's foot, the Texian fires at the target with the most scientific estimate of the strength of his powder, the weight of his shot, and the placing of his sights. His first lesson from his father is, "Never to touch his double trigger until his double sights are right;" and from this important lesson no circumstance can drive him. He holds in contempt the empty show and gewgaw [396] pomp of the camp, and looks upon it as the shadow rather than the substance of power. It is this feeling which has been called by foreigners the ultra democracy of the nation: it is a conscious superiority in themselves which gives confidence to the action.

If a Mexican commits theft or other crime, he is sent to prison therefor, where he takes the highest degrees in human vices, which, it would seem, in the estimation of that government, perfects him for the soldier, and from