Mexico in Transition.

MEXICO IN TRANSITION, FROM THE POWER OF POLITICAL ROMANISM TO CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, by William Butler, D. D. This book will be of surprising interest to all readers, but especially so to Mexican Nationalists. I mentioned this book to a Mexican couple at a Freethought Convention where he was a speaker, and he was quick to reply; I know of that book, it was part of the agreement for the new government, that it was never again to be reproduced in Mexico.' Whether this is true or not I cannot say, but this is a very revealing book and was written from the side of the Republican Forces for Mexican independence. From the Preface we read: "IN view of the false representations which were so industriously disseminated during the struggle described in this work by those. who had an interest in the wrongs which Mexico so long endured, it is hoped that our readers may kindly excuse the constant quotations and documentary aspect of much of the text. Only by going back to original evidence and furnishing the authority for our statements could these falsehoods be exposed and the whole truth be placed before our, readers. This for the author was a long, slow, and laborious process. But we believe it has been amply justified, and that the reading public has now at last Mexico’s side of the question placed before it, with its evidences, so that it can form a more intelligent opinion upon the merits of the mighty struggle which was so providentially guided to an issue that, while it overwhelmed the enemies of the rights of the Mexican people, at the same time and in due order vindicated and established those rights upon foundations which it is expected will stand while sun and moon endure. The errors corrected the reader will find to have been very many; some of them as willful and baseless as that which so daringly asserted that “ Colonel L6pez was a traitor, who sold his sovereign and the password to the Republicans for thirty thousand dollars,” and thus loaded down that officer for twenty years with an opprobrium that was heavy enough to have sunk him into a dishonored grave, while at the time his lips were closed in his own defense until the hour came, three years ago, when the commanding general broke the seal of silence and released the colonel from the peculiar and undeserved misery which he had so long endured under a sense of loyalty to the express wishes of Maximilien, adding another illustration to the maxim that “ Truth is often stranger than fiction.” Maybe this restriction was inserted into the rules for the new government because of the horrible things it discovered in the Inquisition building in Puebla. The conditions and treatment of the victims of the Inquisition are described on page 294 of this book, and in part says: "The cells were four feet six inches on the square, and seven feet high. The need for the thick walls was thus explained. These spaces were left open when building until the victim was condemned and bound in the Examining Chapel above, and brought down to the corridor where the cells were located. He or she (for women were among the number) was placed in the cell, a “brother” of the order who was handy with the trowel was ready to build up the entrance before their face and leave them to a horrible death, while a coat of plaster and whitewash made all invisible, and these fiends in human form may have supposed that they had sealed up their crime forever and buried their secret beyond discovery. Two bodies of such sufferers may still be seen in a glass case in the National Museum in Mexico city." The pictures of three of these bodies exhumed from the wall of the Inquisition building are shown in a picture between pages 294 and 295. The real History of a Nation must always be reported full and clear for all to read and understand, the good AND the bad. It is by this factual history that the citizens of the nation can plot the future, and avoid falling into the same pitfalls again and again. Emmett F. Fields