mined to direct to your Excellency this communication, with the object of making known that they cannot, in any manner, coincide with the measure entertained in the above-named act, not daring to incur the ecclesiastical censures and penalties emitted at the end of the 11th chapter of the 2nd session of the sacred Council of Trent, and reiterated in the third Mexican; and, in consequence, they hereby enter the most solemn protest against the Act now about to be sanctioned, only expecting from the piety of the Supreme Government, that the above-named disposition of the sacred Council of Trent, which comprehends all, whatever may be the dignity invested in them, and which inflicts the highest punishment upon those who disregard it, may be fully respected; obeying, likewise, the fundamental law now reigning through the Republic, which guarantees the property of our ecclesiastical corporations.

May it please your Excellency to make known to the most excellent Senor VicePresident, that these are the sentiments entertained by this Archbishop's Chapter. We present to your Excellency the assurances of our distinguished consideration and esteem. God guard you many years.

Hall of the Sacred Church of the Archbishop's Chapter of Mexico, Jan. 10, 1847, 12 o'clock, noon.

FELIX OSORES, FELIX GARCIA SERALE,
JOSE M. GUZMAN, JOSE M. VASQUEZ.

This protest was followed by others from Puebla, Queretaro, and several interior states. The bill was, notwithstanding, passed, by a vote of 44 to 35.

The whole power of the priesthood was exerted to resist the law, and the popular mind was so excited by the clergy, that officials charged with the duty of levying upon the property, were assailed and driven off by the people. Farias, however, called the military to his aid, and seized the ringleaders, as well as clergy, caught in the act of inciting rebellion. The church excommunicated those who bought, and it was found impossible to sell. The church then suspended its rites; the cathedrals and altars were hung with mourning; the masses, burials, marriages, and baptisms were omitted; and the absence of the usual ceremonies produced a great sensation among a religious people, who cursed the government as the cause. Meantime, the journals in the interests of the clergy denounced the execution and counselled rebellion, as the means of defeating a sacrilegious attempt to despoil the church, at the moment that the only army was being destroyed under the blows of Taylor at Buena Vista. This movement resulted in an i surrection, under Barragan, and the utter defeat of Farias, in relation to the Church Bill. The commotion was only quelled by the arrival of Santa Anna, with the dust of Buena Vista upon him, to be inaugurated president. The fall of Vera Cruz followed, and the reputation of Santa Anna again perished with the army he collected and exposed upon the heights of Cerro Gordo, to the blows of Gen. Scott; but he has been again made Dictator, without the power to make peace or to conclude a negotiation with foreign powers.

In considering the progress of Mexico, since its separation from the mothercountry, a rapid sketch of the leading features of whom we have attempted to make, one "great fact," is apparent, viz: that there has been no steady power in the state, except that of the church; all else has been going rapidly to decay and dissolution. The hierarchy has been to the country very much like a sovereign power. The government has existed like a ministry in monarchical countries, only when its measures did not conflict with the views of the church as sovereign. Almost every change has been brought about by the influence of the clergy; and the government has invariably fallen when ecclesiastical property was attacked. It is also evident that the people of Mexico have not interested themselves in the matter. The

great mass of the population were ignorant Indians, who, having been slaves for three centuries, revolted against Spanish power; and the scenes enacted under their first leader, Hidalgo, "whose war-cry was death to the Gapuchins," afforded ample evidence that their enmity burns as strongly against the Creole Spaniards as the Europeans. When the church excommunicated Hidalgo, he laughed at their impotency, and showed his followers that the curses of Spanish bishops had no efficacy.

In the war of independence, the Creoles succeeded, through the rural clergy, in identifying their cause with the natives; but it is evident, in the extreme apathy with which the revolutions of twenty-five years, as well as the present war, are regarded by the mass of the people, that they have long since discovered that independence of Spain was not political freedom, and to the fears growing out of this fact, may be ascribed the law disarming the population in 1835. A few soldiers have changed the government, made and unmade constitutions, and extended or curtailed the elective franchise at their pleasure; and in no case have the people evinced that they were cognizant of what was doing.

At the date of the revolution, Mexico was free of debt-had a good trade, and protection to life and property might be said to exist. The national wealth was great, and the commercial spirit was growing, and promised soon to place that favored land above most others. All this is woefully changed. To the misfortunes growing out of the struggle with the mother country, have come to be added the disasters of the war carried on by the insurgents among themselves; and as if to strike the final blow at the prosperity of Mexico, the Federal Congress decreed, in 1827, the expulsion of such of the European Spaniards as had escaped from previous assassinations. With them disappeared the capitals of industry, the resources of commerce, the fortune of the country. Banished by a parricidal law, the principal merchants took refuge abroad, and there remained. Opulent proprietors, high functionaries, the possessors of great riches, transferred these to England, France, Spain and the United States. Important exploitations were suspended; the fertile soil of Mexico, its metallic treasures, its admirable geographical position, its ports on the two oceans, became, in a great degree, sterile advantages. The national debt has swollen to more than $100,000,000, of which the largest amount is due England. The provinces of Texas, Yucatan and California have been lost through the policy and frauds of the government; and not only is the credit of the government unequal to the procurement of a dollar of loan, but through the long absence of commercial enterprise, the devastation of civil war, and the insecurity of property, the national wealth has been exhausted. In all this ruin and rapid decay the church alone has remained strong, and steadfastly resisted all encroachments upon its property. It regards with perfect indifference the invasion of the country, and the destruction of its armies, overturning, even in the hour of greatest national peril, any gayernment that proposes to tax their property. In fact, the only consolidated body which has existed in Mexico has been that of the church. The Camanches have ravaged the western provinces with impunity, and robbers have infested the public roads. The citizens, even of the capital, depend upon their own resources for protection against robbers. The military, who form the government, are in fact themselves the robbers. Col. Yanez, the intimate friend and aid-de-camp of Santa Anna, robbed and murdered M. Maifet, the Swiss consul in Mexico, a few years since, with perfect impunity. Incredible disorder pervades the public administration of Mexico. Attacks by armed banditti, and murders, have ever been of extreme frequency in all the provinces-on all the highways; and not a week passed

that the diligences from Mexico and Puebla were not robbed in the very environs of those cities. Officers cause robberies to be committed by their troops, in order to divide with them the spoils of travellers.

With these military robbers we are at war. The power which enabled them to seize office and rob the people, has enabled them thus far to resist the United States; but their means are apparently exhausted. They can no longer raise means of defence, or rouse the enthusiasm of the people they have oppressed; and the church, using its whole influence to avoid peace, refuses a dollar to prosecute the war, while the journals in its interest complain of the apathy of the people. There is evidently no responsible or influential body in Mexico but the church, and its policy seems to be to prolong the war until the military is entirely broken up and destroyed. We have already, in anticipation of the occupation of the capital, and the negotiation of a treaty with the powers that be, a protest from the influen tial states, dissolving that constitution which has so often been set aside, and resolving the Union into its elements of independent states, irresponsible for the acts of the central government in case peace should be negotiated. Hence, there can be no peace. The hierarchy sees its salvation only in an absolute monarchy connected with itself; and it would seem that a restoration of peace can come only from the influence of the democracy of the church or the rural priests, who, with the people, must be guarantied against Spanish domination for the future, through the continued presence of the United States troops.

The annexation of the country to the United States would be a calamity. 5,000,000 ignorant and indolent half-civilized Indians, with 1,500,000 free negroes and mulattoes, the remnants of the British slave trade, would scarcely be a desirable incumbrance, even with the great natural wealth of Mexico. To conclude a peace with any party in power, would be in effect to accept the proposals of the Mexican congress, viz: to withdraw our forces from Mexican territory as a preliminary to peace.

With governments that do not emanate from the people, and have no stability or hold upon the country, it is impossible to negotiate. The political state of Mexico is so far dissolved, that it has no head which can represent or bind it. Although nominally a republic, the people have never had but one government-that of Victoria; and, as we have seen, there has never been an executive strong enough to enforce the laws of congress against the will of the church. There can, therefore, be none of sufficient weight to sustain a treaty to which that power is opposed. To enter into treaty with any party in power, and act upon it by withdrawing troops, would only be to commence the war anew on the occurrence of the next revolution ; or the alternative, of accepting peace and leaving a force to support the authority of the government that made it, until a commercial interest of suf ficient strength shall have grown up to give stability to the government.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE DEITY.

THE Construction of the following argument, in my own mind, originated in the necessity of my nature. Some years ago, I had the misfortune to meet with the fallacies of Hume, on the subject of causation. His specious sophistries shook the faith of my reason as to the being of a God, but could not overcome the fixed repugnance of my heart to a negation so monstrous; and consequently, left that infinite, restless craving for some point of fixed repose which atheism not only cannot give, but absolutely and madly disaffirms.

Through the gloom of utter scepticism, I turned for relief to the Treatise of Paley, and other reasoners, on the mere mechanical hypothesis, but there found, as I deemed, an impassable hiatus in the logic of the argument itself. I was forced to admit that every machine must have had at first a machine-maker; but I saw clearly, that the fact of its being a machine, must, first of all, be proven, before the reasoning could hold at all; and thus the argument was worthless. For as it is based on the assumed postulate of an actual creation, and as such a postulate is anything but self-evident, it needs to be demonstrated. And no logician of the whole mechanical school has ever attempted to furnish such a demonstration. Indeed, were creation once proven, there would be no necessity for more argument on the subject, since a Creator would on that supposition be proven also.

But I saw a still more fatal defect in the reasoning of Paley. I said to myself, suppose that we admit the world to be a machine; still we have no evidence that the machine builder exists now. The watch-maker of Paley's example may have ceased to be, countless centuries ago, and still the watch remains as perfect as ever. And thus the mechanical conception of the universe could afford me no ray of light.

And yet I sought with eager solicitude for some solution of this vast world-enigma. I resembled a child who, in the crowd, had lost its parent. I went about wildly, asking of every one, "Where is he? have ye seen him?" But there was no answer. I teased philosophy, science and literature with endless questionings, but all in vain. I plunged in fierce excitements, but no solace was there. The infinite void in my want-nature would not thus be filled. I was as an Arab, washing himself with sand instead of water. Neither the heat of the heart, nor the impurity of even the surface, diminished by any such lavation. I will not attempt to paint the intense gloom of my situation. Death seemed to ride on the present hour as a race-steed of destruction. The past was a grim waste, strewn with the ruins of worlds, animals, men and things. The future was a chill mist hovering o'er incalculable sepulchres. Every voice in creation seemed to me a wild wail of agony. The godless sun and cold stars glared in my face, turned often to the pitiless sky, which no longer wore the poetic hue of my credulous boyhood.

One beautiful evening in May I was reading by the light of the setting sun in my favorite Plato. I was seated on the grass, interwoven with golden blooms, immediately on the bank of the crystal Colorado of Texas. Dim in the distant west arose, with smoky outlines, massy and irregular, the blue cones of an off-shoot of the Rocky Mountains.

I was perusing one of the Academician's most starry dreams. It had laid fast hold of my fancy without exciting my faith. I wept to think that it could not be true. At length I came to that startling sentence, "God geometrizes." "Vain revery," ," I exclaimed, as I cast the volume on the ground at my feet. It fell close by a beautiful little flower that looked fresh and bright, as if it had just fallen from the bosom of a rainbow. I broke it from its silvery stem, and began to examine its structure. Its stamens were five in number; its green calyx had five parts; its delicate corol was five, parted with rays, expanding like those of the Texan star. This combination of fives three times in the same blossom, appeared to me very singular. I had never thought on such a subject before. The last sentence I had just read in the page of the pupil of Socrates was ringing in my ears"God geometrizes." There was the text written long centuries ago; and here this little flower, in the remote wilderness of the west, furnished the commentary. There suddenly passed, as it were, before my eyes, a faint flash of light. I felt my heart leap in my bosom. The enigma of the universe was open. Swift as a thought I calculated the chances against the production of those three equations of five in only one flower, by any principle devoid of the reason to perceive number. I found that there were one hundred and twenty-five chances against such a supposition. I extended the calculation to two flowers, by squaring the sum last mentioned. The chances amounted to the large sum of fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five. I cast my eyes around in the forest; the old woods were literally alive with those golden blooms, where countless bees were humming, and butterflies sipping honey-dew.

I will not attempt to describe my feelings. My soul became a tumult of radiant thoughts I took up my beloved Plato from the grass where I had tossed him in a fit of despair. Again and again I pressed him to my bosom, with a clasp tender as a mother's around the neck of her sleeping child. I kissed alternately the book and the blossom, bedewing them both with tears of joy. In my wild enthusiasm, I called out to the little birds on the green boughs, trilling their cheery farewells to departing day-" Sing on, sunny birds; sing on sweet minstrels; Lo! ye and I have still a God!" Thus perished the last doubt of the sceptic. Having found the infinite Father, I found also myself and my beloved ones-all, once more. By degrees I put together the following argument: I tried it by every rule of logic; I conjured up every conceivable objection against all its several parts, and grew thoroughly satisfied that it contained an absolute demonstration. But I rested not here. I resolved to have it tested to the uttermost. For this purpose I journeyed all the way to Boston last winter. I presented it to the most eminent pantheists, atheists and sceptics of that literary city. Not one of them attempted to point out a single flaw in its logic.

Thus I became convinced, that the demonstration is utterly unassailable; and I therefore offer it without hesitation to the criticism of the world.

The aggregate argument is my own; though many of the particular elements have been freely borrowed from others, one of which, the a priori demonstration of the inertia of matter, was mainly suggested by that of Dr. Samuel Clarke.

The principal consideration, however, is not as to the authorship, but validity. And this may readily be determined. Let the objector designate its fallacy, and I will be among the first to renounce it altogether. Until this is done, I hold myself pledged to maintain it in fair controversy against all adversaries; though I will not debate the question with any person unacquainted with algebra, geometry, and the rules of strict logic.