in name, for want and wretchedness, general ignorance and slavish humility, are seen there such as I have never, in a solitary instance, witnessed in the slave portion of the United States. Mr. Stephens, in his late work on Yucatan,11 gives the following description of this freedom in that country, which I copy, from its faithfulness to my own observation throughout Mexico. He says: "Looking into the corridor, we saw the poor Indian on his knees on the pavement, with his arms clasped around the knees of another Indian, so as to present his back fairly to the lash. At every blow he rose on one knee, and sent forth a piercing cry. [428] He seemed struggling to retain it, but it burst forth in spite of all his efforts. His whole bearing showed the subdued character of the present Indians, and with the last stripe the expression of his face seemed that of thankfulness for not getting more. Without uttering a word, he crept to the major domo, took his hand, kissed it, and walked away. No sense of degradation crossed his mind. Indeed, so humble is this once fierce people, that they have a proverb of their own, 'Los Indios no oyen sino po las nalas' - the Indians only hear through their backs."12

As I have said before, having been born and brought up in the slave portion of the United States, and been the owner of slaves all my life, I do aver that I never saw or heard of such a case of slavish humility, of servile abasement, which, if anything could, should have disarmed law of its justice, and unnerved the vengeance of a bloodhound. It is true that I have often known slaves improperly punished, and equally true that I have more frequently known them to escape just punishment; but I again repeat, that I never saw or heard in the United States such abasement as Mr. Stephens relates, and many instances which I witnessed myself in Mexico, where, at each stroke of the lash, the miserable Péon praises his God, "Alabo à Dios," on account of his master's mercy.

It was common, upon our arrival at a hacienda in Mexico, to be struck with the conspicuous position of the stocks, a machine for punishment. This machine [429] is made of two pieces of timber, each about thirty feet in length, and three inches thick by twelve in breadth. These timbers are placed one upon the other edgewise, and at every few feet there is a hole large enough for one's neck, and a smaller one on each side for the wrist. For dereliction of duty, among other punishments, the petit tyrant, who presides over these estates as alcalde, condemns the poor Péon's neck and wrist to this cruel duress; and the amount of punishment may be estimated at these haciendas when we state that these machines, each capable of punishing twelve or fifteen at a time, were filled. I cannot err in saying that, if the owner of negroes in the United States were to permit such an instrument of torture upon his plantation, public reprobation, universal and overwhelming, would cause him to abandon the neighbourhood thus outraged. Neither in the United States nor in Texas will the intelligence