History of the Conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1-4). William Hickling Prescott
p. 165) carries back the origin of fiefs in Anahuac to the twelfth century. Carli says, “Le système politique y étoit féodal.” In the next page he tells us, “Personal merit alone made the distinction of the nobility”! (Lettres Américaines, trad. Fr. (Paris, 1788), tom. i. let. 11.) Carli was a writer of a lively imagination.
[55] [There was no such thing as feudalism among the Aztecs. There could not be where the communism which the clan system implies prevailed. Feudalism was a social-political system based upon land. Under it there was a well-defined gradation of ranks, and each lower was bound to the next higher order by protection given in return for service rendered. Moreover, where feudalism prevailed the ownership of the land was vested in one person while the occupancy belonged to another. Feudalism exalted the individual and assured to each man his rights. The clan knew nothing whatever of individual rights. When the conception of personal ownership was developed, and kinship ceased to be the bond which held men together, the clan system of communal living of necessity passed away. But among the Aztecs the feudal conception of personal property never was developed. The Spaniards, knowing no civilization but their own, naturally supposed that the Aztec institutions were similar to the Spanish, and historians generally accepted that view.—M.]
[56] [See summary of Bandelier’s studies, p. 36.—M.]
[57] This magistrate, who was called cihuacoatl,{*} was also to audit the accounts of the collectors of the taxes in his district. (Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 127.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 25.) The Mendoza Collection contains a painting of the courts of justice under Montezuma, who introduced great changes in them. (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i., Plate 70.) According to the interpreter, an appeal lay from them, in certain cases, to the king’s council. Ibid., vol. vi. p. 79.
{*} [This word, a compound of cihuatl, woman, and coatl, serpent, was the name of a divinity, the mythical mother of the human species. Its typical application may have had reference to justice, or law, as the source of social order.—K.]
[58] Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 127, 128.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.—In this arrangement of the more humble magistrates we are reminded of the Anglo-Saxon hundreds and tithings, especially the latter, the members of which were to watch over the conduct of the families in their districts and bring the offenders to justice. The hard penalty of mutual responsibility was not known to the Mexicans.
[59] Zurita, so temperate, usually, in his language, remarks that, in the capital, “Tribunals were instituted which might compare in their organization with the royal audiences of Castile.” (Rapport, p. 93.) His observations are chiefly drawn from the Tezcucan courts, which in their forms of procedure, he says, were like the Aztec. (Loc. cit.)
[60] Boturini, Idea, p. 87.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 26.—Zurita compares this body to the Castilian córtes. It would seem, however, according to him, to have consisted only of twelve principal judges, besides the king. His meaning is somewhat doubtful. (Rapport, pp. 94, 101, 106.) M. de Humboldt, in his account of the Aztec courts, has confounded them with the Tezcucan. Comp. Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples indigènes de l’Amérique (Paris, 1810), p. 55, and Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 128, 129.
[61] “If this should be done now, what an excellent thing it would be!” exclaims Sahagun’s Mexican editor. Hist. de Nueva-España, tom. ii. p. 304, nota.—Zurita, Rapport, p. 102.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., ubi supra.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 67.
[62] [There is a hint here of the “Compurgators” of the Germanic tribes.—M.]
[63] Zurita, Rapport, pp. 95, 100, 103.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, loc. cit.—Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, pp. 55, 56.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 11, cap. 25.—Clavigero says the accused might free himself by oath: “il reo poteva purgarsi col giuramento.” (Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. p. 129.) What rogue, then, could ever have been convicted?
[64] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 36.—These various objects had a symbolical meaning, according to Boturini, Idea, p. 84.
[65] [Compare the “codes” of the Germanic races.—M.]
[66] Paintings of the Mendoza Collection, Pl. 72, and Interpretation, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 87.—Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 7.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 130-134.—Camargo, Hist. de Tlascala, MS.—They could scarcely have been an intemperate people, with these heavy penalties hanging over them. Indeed, Zurita bears testimony that those Spaniards who thought they were greatly erred. (Rapport, p. 112.) M. Ternaux’s translation of a passage of the Anonymous Conqueror, “aucun peuple n’est aussi sobre” (Recueil de Pièces relatives à la Conquête du Mexique, ap. Voyages, etc. (Paris, 1838), p. 54), may give a more favorable impression, however, than that intended by his original, whose remark is confined to abstemiousness in eating. See the Relatione, ap. Ramusio, Raccolta delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Venetia, 1554-1565).
[67] In ancient Egypt the child of a slave was born free, if the father were free. (Diodorus, Bibl. Hist., lib. 1, sec. 80.) This, though more liberal than the code of most countries, fell short of the Mexican.
[68] In Egypt the same penalty was attached to the murder of a slave as to that of a freeman. (Ibid., lib. 1, sec. 77.) Robertson speaks of a class of slaves held so cheap in the eye of the Mexican law that one might kill them with impunity. (History of America (ed. London, 1776), vol. iii. p. 164.) This, however, was not in Mexico, but in Nicaragua (see his own authority, Herrera, Hist. general, dec. 3, lib. 4, cap. 2), a distant country, not incorporated in the Mexican empire, and with laws and institutions very different from those of the latter.
[69] [A “collared” slave was fastened at night to a wall by his wooden collar.—M.]
[70] Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 12, cap. 15; lib. 14, cap. 16, 17.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 8, cap. 14.—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 134-136.
[71] Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 38, and Relaciones, MS.—The Tezcucan code, indeed, as digested under the great Nezahualcoyotl, formed the basis of the Mexican, in the latter days of the empire. Zurita, Rapport, p. 95.
[72] In this, at least, they did not resemble the Romans; of whom their countryman could boast, “Gloriari licet, nulli gentium mitiores placuisse pœnas.” Livy, Hist., lib. 1, cap. 28.
[73] [For “crown lands” read “subject tribes”; for “king’s palaces,” “communal houses.”—M.]