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him and his family to Spain, and assumed the reins of government. Two years after this event, the revolution broke out under the Curate Hidalgo, and continued with various success, until the year 1821, when General Iturbide, prompted by the clergywho, warned by the liberal spirit manifested in Spain, trembled for their temporal possessions, if the country remained under the government of the Spanish cortes-deserted the cause of the mother country, and proclaimed the independence of Mexico.

The plan of Iguala, and the treaties of Cordova, which were made between Iturbide and General O'Donoju, shortly after the arrival of the latter in the character of captain-general of Mexico, were a singular compromise of the interests of the Creoles, the European Spaniards, and the clergy; and provided equally for the independence of the country and the rights of the Spanish monarch. Spain first broke this compact, by declaring the treaties of Cordova null and void, and Iturbide, taking advantage of this, and urged on by some of the higher clergy and the military, caused himself to be proclaimed emperor. He very soon, however, proved himself altogether inadequate to sustain the sceptre he had usurped. The want of organization in his government, and the total absence of any thing approaching a financial system, early undermined the foundation of his throne; and he fell without a struggle. He was succeeded by an executive government, composed of three persons, which ruled the country until the adoption of the present federal institutions. The party which had most essentially contributed to the overthrow of Iturbide, was monarchical in its principles; and they opposed with all their influence the establishment of a republican form of government. They preferred a limited monarchy; and when public opinion, strongly pronounced, compelled them to abandon their favourite project, they recommended earnestly and zealously a consolidated, or as it is called there, a central governA majority of the constituent congress, and a vast majority of the people, were disposed to imitate these United States: thus they adopted a constitution so similar to ours as to be almost a literal translation of it. They have neglected, however, to provide a third body, which can preserve the rights of the general government from the usurpations of the states, and the rights of the states from the assumed power of the general government. It often therefore happens, that the states resist the execution of the decrees of the federal government, declaring to be unconstitutional whatever is injurious to their particular interests, or what it is merely inconvenient for them to carry into execution; while the federal government not unfrequently annuls the laws of the states, under the pretext that they are unconstitutional. Both these powers are assumed: the former ex necessitate rei, and the latter from construction. Both are, in our opinion, in

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compatible with well ordered government, and if not amended in practice, will of themselves occasion a dissolution of the Union.

The oligarchy, which had worked the overthrow of Iturbide, failed in their attempts to establish a monarchy or a central government, and used every exertion to elect General Bravo first president of the United Mexican States. Of the character of this man, we would have abstained from speaking, because he is well known to be an enemy of our republic, and attached to the interests of Great Britain, which he erroneously supposes quite distinct from ours; but since his return to Mexico, from this country, where he was kindly and hospitably received, he has published slanders, in order, as he says, to rouse the Mexican people from their lethargy, and awaken them to the dangers to which they are exposed from their ambitious neighbours, the United States of America. Such conduct merits the severest reprobation, and if we wished ill to any party in Mexico, or to the interests of Great Britain, we would desire to see the one with such a man for its chief, and the other with such an ally. He is certainly one of the weakest men ever raised by the force of fortuitous circumstances, to a high station in public life. We have too much friendship for Mexico, not to express a hope that he will be permitted to enjoy the retirement in which he has lived since his return to his native country.

Fortunately, as we believe, for the nation, at that time, General Victoria was elected first president, under the federal constitution. He was not, however, a man suited to the difficult circumstances under which he was placed-at the head of an infant state, torn by contending factions, which continued during his whole administration to struggle fiercely for power. Victoria had been himself in favour of a central form of government. Indeed, he once matured the plan of a monarchy, which he confided to a few friends, and which was his favourite project. He proposed, that one of the distinguished chieftains of the revolution should espouse an Indian woman, as nearly descended from the ancient princes of the country as could be found, and then be crowned emperor of Mexico. In this manner, he thought, a new dynasty would spring up, likely to reconcile to its rule all classes of people in their new kingdom. He did not trouble himself about securing to the people any guarantees or chartered rights, and as he was himself the only distinguished general of the revolution unmarried, the fair conclusion was, that he wished to govern Mexico regally. He had the imprudence to disclose this plan to some of the officers of Iturbide's staff, shortly after the adoption of the plan of Iguala, and was laughed at for his pains.

Victoria's long seclusion from society, during the revolution

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ary war, so elaborately and faithfully described by Mr. Ward, had given to his character a contemplative cast, and he evidently felt embarrassed and distressed when obliged to mingle with his fellows. He associated, therefore, with very few, and was constantly exposed to be deceived. He wished to do what was right, but not being able to judge for himself, he received contradictory opinions from those who surrounded him, and after hesitating, frequently until the season of action was past, generally decided wrong. Before he was elected president, and while residing in Jalapa, he had known an Englishman, who pretended to be authorized by his government to assure the Mexican people of the friendly disposition of Great Britain towards them, and to warn them against the encroaching spirit of the United States. Victoria was persuaded of both propositions, and warmly protested his attachment to England, and his horror of his naughty neighbours, from whom he had so frequently received succour in time of his greatest need. This person left Vera Cruz, charged with a letter to Mr. Canning, from Victoria, who ever after regarded the friendly relations which subsist between the two countries, as his own peculiar work. The correspondence was kept up between these personages, during the greater part of the administration of Victoria, and always in the same strain-elaborate counsel on the one part, and protestations of deference on the other, counsel, which, we have reason to believe, engendered and fostered the strange and undefined jealousy entertained by Victoria against the United States. We say undefined, because we happen to know, that he had some faint idea of the existence of a neutral tract of country bordering on the Mississippi, of which we had defrauded Spain, and that in the treaty of limits, in which our government had acted with so much generosity as to incur the blame of a portion of their fellow-citizens, our negotiator had taken advantage of the weakness of Spain, and wrested from her the fairest portion of the Mexican territory. Upon being once asked what reason he had to entertain an unfavourable opinion of our envoy, he replied that he really had no reason to do so; but that he was quite an extraordinary person;-"I can not make him out, he knows a great deal, and the government of the United States must have some motive for sending such a man to Mexico." Suspicion without perspicacity is unfortunately not confined to the ex-president of the Mexican republic; it is universal among that people, and they are therefore more generally and more easily deceived than any other; a trait in their national character which has occasioned almost all their political errors.

Victoria's cabinet was composed of persons who had been in favour of a central form of government, and some of whom were personally attached to his rival, General Bravo. This was cer

tainly a radical error; for although there were among them men of education and intelligence, they had no sympathy with the success or reputation of the administration of which they formed a part. This state of things, bad as it was, became worse, when the force of public opinion compelled Victoria to take into his cabinet Don Miguel Ramos Arispe, a man to whom the adoption of the federal constitution was in some measure due; who united to extensive information and natural talent, a restless spirit, which led him too often to change his party, and vacillate from the principles he had formerly professed.-About the same time that Arispe entered the cabinet, Don Lucas Alaman left it, and was succeeded by a person in every respect his inferior. Still the division of parties continued to exist in the cabinet; and it was amusing to hear the president descant upon the extraordinary sagacity with which he balanced the influence of the two parties, and the perfect impartiality he displayed in the distribution of office. At the commencement of his administration, the party which was known in Mexico by the title of Escoceses, or Scotch Masons, and which had been most active in the overthrow of Iturbide, occupied the principal offices in the state. Their members constituted a majority in the cabinet; they held almost all the civil offices of high trust, and they commanded the army. This party, which had learnt in Spain to pervert a purely philanthropic institution into an engine of political power, which they wielded with great effect against Iturbide, was composed of the aristocracy and great landed proprietors; of the higher orders of the clergy; of the Spaniards who had remained in the country; of the foreigners, and, with one exception, of the members of the diplomatic corps-a state of things which could only arise in a country entirely new to the science of self-government.

The popular party, who had, by weight of numbers, arrested the plans of their opponents to erect a monarchy in Mexico, finding that the president, who owed his election to their efforts, considered himself safer in the hands of the aristocracy, and placed no confidence in them, murmured against his administration, and at one time entertained thoughts of overturning it by force. Better counsels, fortunately, prevailed; and they determined to organize their party after the model of the Escoceses. This was so far unfortunate, as it supposed the necessity of secret societies; whereas success would have crowned their efforts without resorting to such reprehensible means. In a representative and purely elective government, the democracy must always have the ascendency; and it would have been quite sufficient to establish newspapers of their own, and to bring their numbers to the polls, to secure a triumph over a party which did not amount

to one-sixth of the population. The popular party believed that the principal strength of their adversaries consisted in their organization into secret societies, and attributed all the early success of the aristocratic party to this cause alone; and both of them, unaccustomed to the operation of the wise system adopted by the nation, saw, in what was nothing more than the natural effect of their institutions, the mysterious workings of secret political manœuvres, and the magic influence of some superior intelligence. This was especially the case when the elections were gained by the popular party, and the power wrested from the hands of the aristocracy, who had so long governed the country. The Escoceses were firmly persuaded that Mr. Poinsett, the envoy from our government, had marshalled against them the popular forces, and directed all their movements;-a belief which gave rise to a series of extraordinary circumstances, unprecedented in the history of diplomacy.

For two years before this revolution was effected, the affairs of Mexico were apparently in a very flourishing state. Large sums of money had been introduced into the country by the English mining companies, which, however unprofitably expended, contributed to the prosperity of the mining districts, and augmented considerably the circulation of the country. The government had effected loans to an amount sufficient to enable them to augment the number of their troops, to arm and clothe them, to purchase ships of war, and to pay punctually the numerous and ruinous pensions and high salaries with which the nation is burthened. A newly opened channel of trade is always pursued with eagerness and improvidence; and Mexico was enriched by the mistaken speculations of merchants of all nations. But when foreigners became aware of the real demands of that market, and the moneys borrowed in London were squandered, the depression was so sudden that the people could not believe it arose from natural causes. The party from whose hands the power had passed away, pretended to see in this change-which was really produced by their own improvidence-the mismanagement of their successors, and the secret agency of the envoy of the United States, whom they represented to be actuated by the basest motive, that of retarding the progress of Mexico, because the greatness and prosperity of that country were incompatible with the welfare of his own; an idea which could be entertained only by a people utterly ignorant of the relative position of the two countries, as well as of the simplest elements of political economy. Many of those men were weak and ignorant enough to believe, that if they could drive this gentleman from the country, they would be able to re-establish their influence and power. General Bravo was one of them, and was

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