No. 352.
Mr. Foster to Mr. Evarts .

No. 751.]

Sir: In my No. 749 of the 3d instant, in giving an account of the recent elections, I referred to the divisions in the liberal party in this country. A significant article on this subject appeared yesterday in the Monitor Republicano, one of the leading newspapers of the country, written by Hon. I. M. Vigil, for many years a prominent public man, who has held high offices under the administrations of Juarez and Lerdo, and was lately a member of the federal supreme court. The article, which I inclose, reflects the sentiments of a large class of public men, and presents the embarrassments of the country in a strong light.

I am, &c.,

JOHN W. FOSTER.
[Inclosure in No. 751.––Translation.]

The divisions of the liberal party—their sad consequences for the country.

We have frequently asked ourselves what the divisions of the liberal party in Mexico signify. Proclaiming the same principles, entertaining the same aspirations, united in the same history of abnegation and sacrifices, it is not understood how the numerous members of this great family have separated and every day separate more, when they should, from the very nature of things, combine their efforts and unitedly advance to the attainment of a great object, the progress and prosperity of the country.

The antagonism between parties which aspire to ends diametrically opposite to such an extent that what one affirms the other denies, is a logical consequence of their respective situations. No one can be surprised, for example, that the reactionary element is radically the enemy of the progressive school. Between the tendencies toward the past and the aspirations toward the future, between the denial of political liberty and its realization, there neither is nor can there be agreement of any kind, because it would be equivalent to expecting contrary ideas to become reconciled and produce a harmonious whole. But when nothing of this exists, but, on the contrary, the agreement upon principles, even to their most remote consequences, is a real and positive fact, then these struggles and conflicts cannot be understood, the fecundity of which in evil can only be measured by their sterility for good.

But nevertheless the discord in the bosom of the liberal party forms the political history of our country for the past ten years; for more than ten years these fratricidal rancors have covered the vast extension of the republic with the blood and ruin, exhausting the vital force of the nation, wasting precious time which could have been employed in the organization of elements which to-day are tossed in the chaos of anarchy. And this singular and painful phenomenon, on reaching its farthest limits, illustrates all the lack of utility, and, let us say it at once, all the criminality which is allied with the causes which have produced it.

We are accustomed to hear the daily accusations which the contending factions mutually launch at each other, in which they appear to have exhausted recrimination [Page 572] and abuse. Each one of these factions endeavors to persuade the nation that it alone possesses political truth, that it alone is the depository of patriotism; republican virtue, and respect for the constitution, while it attributes to its adversaries sordid egotism, bastard interest, and arbitrary conduct in all their operations, as the result of the most mean and repugnant motives. The nation in the mean time witnesses this unedifying spectacle and pronounces an irrevocable sentence, because it, being above individual passions, and knowing perfectly the history of our men and our parties, knows very well what to regard in the torrent of reproaches and imputations which cannot obscure the truth of the facts. Because, really, if we look for the origin of such contentions, if we examine the conduct of the parries which contend, and destroy each other as far as possible, it will be seen that none of them will remain guiltless before the tribunal of history; since, although all embrace men of good intentions, patriots who have lent eminent services to the country in the days of trial, all have also committed errors of grave importance which have brought the republic to the extreme of disunion and anarchy, and which portend a future still more unhappy.

But if experience tells us this; if impartial reason can do no less than recognize the fact that on losing sight of the great idea which serves as a nucleus to the liberal party, the different portions which produced such schism followed a course of adventure, from which the common country could expect nothing good or useful, it is now time to seriously reflect upon the fruits of such deviation and make a powerful effort to stay if possible the consequences which are yet to be derived from such lamentable antecedents.

Many times we have asked ourselves, is reconciliation among the different members of the republican family possible? Can the reconstruction of the great party, which symbolizes the national aspirations for peace, liberty, and progress, be effected? And in case of the absence of sufficient abnegation for the consummation of so meritorious a work, what is the fate which awaits, not merely a certain political organization, but the country disunited, debilitated, impotent to control the disorder which consumes it?

These questions, we do not conceal it, embrace as many other problems, the simple enunciation of which surprises and startles the mind of him who is constantly preoccupied with the future destiny of our nationality and our race. Because there is no occasion to hug delusions; if the contentions of personal factions are to continue as up to the present, keeping the country in a struggle more or less stupid, more or less bloody, peace is impossible, and the resources of authority exhausted, respect for the institutions lost, disgraced before foreign nations, it will neither be possible to establish a durable government nor to restrain crime which, under a thousand forms, may invade society, the country being condemned, as it seems, to inevitable dissolution.

If, then, no good is to be derived from division, from breaking into fragments, and if this deadly combat between victors and vanquished cannot be converted into a stable and durable situation, no recourse is left except to appeal to the union of the party which should not have divided, re-establishing it upon its natural bases, regenerating it in the genuine inspiration of its principles, returning to its strength and energy, in order that it may fulfill the social mission which is imposed upon it, and advance unobstructed by the upright path of reason and justice.

Perhaps we may be censured as Utopians, as dreamers with impossible ideals, as visionary politicians who are not familiar with the positive ground of reality; perhaps it will be thrown in our faces that we lose time in endeavoring to weld together the fragments of a whole, irrevocably shattered; it may be so; but so long as there is any probability of emerging from the chaos in which the Mexican people is agitated, so long as one hope exists of putting an end to the state of anarchy in which all society writhes convulsively, it is our duty to point out that probability, to encourage that hope, outside of which there is no plank of safety in the midst of the wreck of all the ideas which maintain and give life to the nations.

In a word, the reconstruction of the liberal party is the only salvation for the republic in the supreme conflict to which it has arrived, and we do not despair of this reconstruction being effected, by means of that mysterious law which presides over society, preventing nations from falling into definite dissolution.