The political agitators are mostly among them; and it is they, more than any other class, who are continually stirring up factions and making pronunciamientos (what a pleasant thing it is that we have never had to make an English word for "pronunciamiento").

Several times, efforts have been made to reduce the Army List to decent proportions, but a fresh crop always springs up.
In the "lowest depth" of mismanagement to which Mexican military affairs have sunk, the newspapers still triumphantly refer to countries which surpass them in this respect, and, at the time of our arrival, were citing the statistics of the Peruvian Republic, where there are a general and twenty officers to every sixty soldiers, and as many naval officers as seamen.
These officers are not subject to the civil administration at all, whatever they may do.

They have their _fuero_, their private charter, and are only amenable to their own tribunals, just as the clergy are to theirs.

To the ill effects of the presence of such armies and such officers in the country, we must add the continual interruptions to commerce arising from the distracted state of the republic, and the uncertain tenure by which every one holds his property, not to say his life; and this, in its effect on the morale of the whole country, is worse than the positive suffering they inflict.

So much for soldiering, for the present.