One necessary part of a hacienda is a church.  The proprietors are compelled by law to build one, and pay the priest’s fees for mass on Sundays and feast-days.  Now, almost all the English one meets with engaged in business, or managing mines and plantations, are Scotch, and one may well suppose that there is not much love lost between them and the priests.  The father confessor plays an important part in the great system of dishonesty that prevails to so monstrous an extent throughout the country.  He hears the particulars of the thefts and cheatings that have been practised on the proprietor who builds his church and pays for his services, and he complacently absolves his penitents in consideration of a small penance.  Not a word about restitution; and just a formal injunction to go and sin no more, which neither priest nor penitent is very sincere about.  The various evils of the Roman Catholic system have been reiterated till the subject has become tiresome, but this particular practice is so contrary to the simplest notions of morality, and has produced such fearful effects on the character of this nation, that one cannot pass it by without notice.  If the Superintendent should roast the parish priest in front of the oxidising furnace, till he confessed all he knew about the thefts of his parishioners from the Company, he would tell strange stories,—­how Juan Fernandez carried off sixpennyworth of silver in each car every day for a month; and how Pedro Alvarado (the Indian names have almost disappeared except in a few families, and Spanish names have been substituted) had a hammer with a hollow handle, like the stick that Sancho Panza delivered his famous judgment about, and carried away silver in it every day when he left work; and how Vasco Nunez stole the iron key from the gate (which cost two dollars to replace), walking twenty miles and losing a day’s work in order to sell it, and eventually getting but twopence for it; and plenty more stories of the same kind.  The Padre at Regla, we heard, was not given to preaching sermons, but had lately favoured his congregation with a very striking one, to the effect that the Company paid him only three dollars a time for saying mass, and that he ought to have four.

Almost every traveller who visits Mexico enlarges on the dishonesty which is rooted in the character of the people.  That they are worse now in this respect than they were before the Conquest is highly probable.  Their position as a conquered and enslaved people, tended, as it always does, to foster the slavish vices of dissimulation and dishonesty.  The religion brought into the country by the Spanish missionaries concerned itself with their belief, and left their morals to shift for themselves, as it does still.