fection and endurance of our political fabric depends," while that pledge is disregarded and even scouted by the Republican party of to-day. And the difference in practice is the difference between responsible and irresponsible government.

It was apparent to the founders of the Government, from the very nature of things, that no responsible government, State or national, could be maintained if either were allowed to frustrate the operations of the other, and the debauchery which has resulted from the departure from this principle by the centralists, since the death of Lincoln, is but a striking illustration of this obvious truth. It is the practical reductio ad absurdum of centralism, as secession was of States-rights extravagance.

There is one result from superseding Lincoln's proclamation by the centralists of which they seek to take advantage, to which I invite attention. It will be remembered that the people of the South responded promptly, after the Confederate armies were driven off, to the proclamation, reorganized their State governments, annulled the secession ordinances, all obligations created by their secession governments, adopted the emancipation amendment, and elected Senators and Representatives to Congress, every one of whom, without exception, had opposed secession, thus subordinating themselves in all respects to the Constitution and laws of the United States as they stood, and condemning in the most marked manner the fraud by which the secret organizations of secession had seized their governments and forced them into rebellion. But the governments thus instituted by the people were overthrown by the military under Thad. Stevens's Reconstruction Bill, for the avowed purpose of appropriating to the Republican party the political power of the South. By that bill the power of establishing suffrage was exercised by Congress in direct violation of the Constitution, which in terms gave that power to the States; more than half the whites were disfranchised, and four millions of blacks were given forty-six thousand more votes than eight millions of whites, and a class of camp-followers were installed in the State governments who fleeced the impoverished people by exorbitant taxation while burdening them with one hundred and seventy millions of dollars of debt for which the States received no value.

Extremes beget extremes; hence it is not surprising that the people thus subjected to years of humiliation and spoliation, when they recovered the right to be heard in the councils of the nation, should send the bitterest secessionists they could find. They had

condemned these men, but Thad. Stevens and his carpet-baggers had more than justified them. Here is the explanation of the presence in Congress of so many Confederate brigadiers, and of some even of the old plotters of secession, who would otherwise have scarcely been tolerated in the South. If this result was not calculated by Stevens and his associates, it certainly is just what they desired, for it has served to keep alive sectional jealousy and hate, and subjected elections in both sections to the control of these passions; freed the politicians from responsibility on administrative questions, licensed their jobbery, and explains their coöperation in setting aside Tilden's election because he would suppress sectionalism and the jobbery fostered by it.

The object of centralism, as it was of secession, is irresponsible power. We have seen that secession sought to accomplish that object by making slavery the basis of a continental conquering power, to be modeled after the so-called ancient republics, the greatest of which was a patrician oligarchy. With the same object, the centralists have sought to fortify and perpetuate themselves in power by establishing great moneyed interests to which the Government is made subservient, and by the lavish and corrupt use of money collected directly from the people.

During the nine years ending June 30, 1875, there was paid for the ordinary expenditures the enormous sum of $1,396,808,348.57, exclusive of all payments for pensions and interest. The annual payments during this period of profound peace were more than threefold as great as they had ever been before the war, and the aggregate falls but $45,000,000 short of the whole expenditure for all purposes during the seventy-one years which preceded the war, including the cost of all the Indian wars, the war with Great Britain, with Mexico and Tripoli, and the price paid for Louisiana, Florida, and California! Such expenditure involves necessarily the utter demoralization of public life, and accordingly we find it has created a multitude of corrupt combinations of public men known as rings, such as the Credit Mobilier ring, the Indian ring, the Whisky ring, the District of Columbia ring, and others which have scandalized the country.

This policy also originated the grant of 171,000,000 acres of public land directly and indirectly to railroad corporations, an area greater in extent than New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Indiana, and Illinois. The value of this land in the near future is beyond computation.

It consists of the best of the public lands, and comprises nearly all of the agricultural land remaining unappropriated. Estimated at five dollars per acre, it is already equal in value to one half of the public debt. But, not being subject to State or national taxation, the mass of it will be held in mortmain, and become the source of unlimited wealth and political power to the numerous and powerful corporations by which it is held.

Another great factor of Republican power is the enormous annual grant made to the manufacturing class out of the people's pockets by the protective tariff. It is demonstrated by an eminent statistician that this system compels our farming class to pay annually not less than $340,000,000 more than the actual value of the manufactured articles they use, while greatly reducing the price of everything they produce.

Another great interest established to maintain the centralists in power is the national-banking system. More than three thousand institutions have been invested with the banking franchise and with the credit of the United States, made public depositories and the almost exclusive depositories of individuals also, for all other institutions have been taxed out of existence.

These and other allied money interests now hold the Government. They constitute what Mr. Conkling in his speech of the 18th of September calls "our colossal fabric of commercial, industrial, and financial interests," and whose help he so earnestly invokes, telling them in substance that the real issue in the election is between them and the people, or whether the rich or the poor shall govern. He had said, in opening his address, that "the general issue confronting us is in itself and in its bearing sectional," but he offered no proof of this assertion, save only that the South was united in support of the Democratic candidates. He did not adduce a single fact tending to show that the masses of the people of the different sections have now any antagonistic political or pecuniary interest, or give any reason why the people of the North who favor economical and honest administration, and government by the people and for the people, instead of by "our colossal fabric" and "for our colossal fabric," should not coöperate with the people of the South in effecting their common objects, or attempt to show that the Southern people were not now striving in good faith for those desirable objects.

MONTGOMERY BLAIR.

THE RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

PART III.

I VENTURE to offer here a few observations on the conditions of life in elevated regions. Some writers have asserted that, at altitudes over twelve thousand feet, human life is shortened by at least one half. Now, at Tlamacas, where I found myself among the Indians who take out sulphur from Popocatepetl-that is to say, among people who live at an elevation of nearly twenty thousand feet-every one appeared to enjoy good health. The foreman, or volcanero, as he is called, has worked for twenty-seven years in the volcano, and his brother thirty-two years, yet both are strong and healthy. Others have worked from fifteen to eighteen years without experiencing any ill effects whatever, and it is only those who indulge in strong drink that are short-lived. Here, again, I must challenge the judgment of certain authors who hold that at high altitudes spirituous liquors are specially harmful. Excess works the ruin of all those who abandon themselves to it, but every one of the laborers in the volcano takes, in the morning and in the evening, and sometimes at noon, a good draught of mezcal or habanero. They say that without the grog they could not endure the climate or undergo the fatigue. Nevertheless, their triple ration of spirits would be for a stranger far in excess of moderation.

EXPEDITION TO THE MISPAYANTLA BARRANCA.

A barranca is a deep valley with perpendicular walls between mountains; the barranca of Mispayantla is one of the most picturesque of them all. Beginning at the Friar's Peak, at the very foot of Popocatepetl, it stretches toward the west till it debouches in the plain of Ameca. When I was in this region before, the Indians brought to me sundry objects in terra-cotta purporting to come from this barranca. Further, they spoke of caves or grottoes, and

now I determined to explore them. Accordingly, on the 13th of July, accompanied by a guide and three Indian laborers, I visited the barranca. The grottoes are situated at the height of two hundred and thirty feet from the ground, and my Indians had to cut steps in the rock and clay to enable me to reach them.

At first sight the effect was a grievous disillusion, for the caves are simply immense rock-shelters. Into the largest one, which has an opening one hundred and forty feet in length, one can penetrate on all-fours for a distance of forty or fifty feet; but the place is quite uninhabitable, owing to the infiltration of water. Certain diggings and dirt-heaps gave evidence that we had been preceded here long before by other searchers, and all appearances went to show that these caves had never been used except as a temporary habitation or as burial-places.

Broken ornaments and fragments of skulls lay scattered here and there, but there was nothing worth collecting. Two wooden crosses showed that the Indians were not unmindful of their forefathers. The two smaller caves could at best only afford shelter from rain. Still, from the few fragments we gathered, we may in some measure divine the end and aim of the men who took refuge in these inaccessible heights. We found handles of saucepans of all sizes and of different kinds of clay, some of them neatly fashioned, others rudely. Then we found fragments of red earthen vases with a fair glaze, and striped with black; an unfinished idol representing Tlaloc; a tube with holes bored in it, and which may be part of a flute. In all probability these caves were occupied as places of refuge by the Indians after the conquest, to escape from the persecution of the Spaniards and the hard labor in the mines. Here they lived in misery, and here they buried their dead. The caves are situated ten thousand four hundred feet above sea-level.

An Indian of considerable intelligence has given me a new explanation of the cemetery of Tenenepanco: I find nothing of the kind in the historians of the conquest. They merely tell us that, though sometimes the Indians buried their dead high up in the mountains, they usually buried them in their houses, in their gardens, or in the immediate neighborhood of their homes. According to my Indian informant, all the agricultural populations around about Popocatepetl paid special worship to Tlaloc, the rain-god. He was their principal god, and from him came the harvests, both good and bad. When there was plenty of rain, there were abundant crops; when rain failed, there was famine. These rural popula