ITURBIDE RETURNS ---- ARREST EXECUTION. 305 March, and were chosen by the old congress which quickly reassembled, as a triumvirate to exercise supreme executive powers until the new congress assembled in the following August. In October, 1824, this body finally sanctioned the federal constitution, which, after various revolutions, overthrows, and reforms, was readopted in the year 1847. On the 14th of July, 1824, a vessel under British colors was perceived on the Mexican coast near the mouth of the Santander. On the next day, a Polish gentlemen came on shore from the ship, and, announcing himself as Charles de Beneski, visited General Felix la Garza, commandant of the district of Soto la Marina. He professed to visit that remote district, with a friend, for the purpose of purchasing land from the government on which they designed establishing a colony. Garza gave them leave to enter the country for this purpose; but suspicions were soon aroused against the singular visiters and they were arrested. As soon as the friend of the Pole was stripped of his disguise, the Emperor Iturbide stood in front of Garza, whom he had disgraced for his participation in the revolt during his brief reign. La Garza immediately secured the prisoner, and sent him to Padilla, where he delivered him to the authorities of Tamaulipas. The state legislature being in session, promptly resolved, in the excess of patriotic zeal, to execute a decree of the congress, passed in the preceding April, by condemning the royal exile to death. Short time was given Iturbide to arrange his affairs. He was allowed no appeal to the general government. He confessed to a priest on the evening of the 19th of July, and was led to the place of execution, where he fell, pierced with four balls, two of which took effect in his brain and two in his heart! Thus perished the hero who, suddenly, unexpectedly, and ef fectually, crushed the power of Spain in North America. It is not fair to judge him by the standards that are generally applied to the life of a distinguished civilian, or even of a successful soldier, in countries where the habits and education of the people fit them for duties requiring forbearance, patience, or high intellectual culture. Iturbide was, according to all reliable accounts, a refined gentleman, yet he was tyrannical and sometimes cruel, for it is recorded in his own handwriting, that on Good Friday, 1814, “in honor of the day, he had just ordered three hundred excommunicated wretches to be shot!" His early life was passed in the saddle and the barrack room; nor had he much leisure to pursue the. studies of a statesman, even if his mind had been capable of re 306 HIS CHARACTER AND SERVICES. solving all their mysteries. His temper was not calculated for the liberal debates of a free senate. He was better fitted to discipline an army than to guide a nation. Educated in a school in which subordination is a necessity, and where unquestioning obedience is exacted, he was unable to appreciate the rights of deliberative assemblies. He felt, perhaps, that, in the disorganized condition of his country, it was needful to control the people by force in order. to save the remnant of civilization from complete anarchy. But he wanted conciliatory manners to seduce the congress into obedience to his behests, and he therefore unfortunately and unwisely played the military despot when he should have acted the part of a quiet diplomatist. Finding himself, in two years, emperor of Mexico, after being, at the commencement of that period, nothing more than commander of a regiment, it may be pardoned if he was bewildered by the rapidity of his rise, and if the air he breathed in his extraordinary ascent was too etherial for a man of so excitable a temperament. In every aspect of his character, we must regard him as one altogether inadequate to shape the destiny of a nation emerging from the blood and smoke of two revolutions, a nation whose political tendencies towards absolute freedom, were at that time, naturally, the positive reverse of his own. Death sealed the lips of men who might have clamored for him in the course of a few years, when the insubordinate spirit that was soon manifested needed as bold an arm as that of Iturbide, in his best days, to check or guide it. Public opinion was decidedly opposed to his sudden and cruel slaughter. Mexicans candidly acknowledged that their country's independence was owing to him; and whilst they admitted that Garza's zeal for the emperor's execution might have been lawful, they believed that revenge for his former disgrace, rather than patriotism, induced the rash and ruthless soldier to hasten the death of the noble victim whom fortune had thrown in his lonely path. Agustin de Hurbidy CHAPTER V. 1824-1829. REVIEW OF THE CONDITION OF MEXICO AND THE FORMATION OF WE must pause a moment over the past history of Mexico, for the portion we now approach has few of the elements either of union or patriotism which characterized the early struggles for national independence. The revolutionary war had merited and received the commendation of freemen throughout the world. The prolonged struggle exhibited powers of endurance, an unceasing resolution, and a determination to throw off European thraldom, which won the respect of those northern powers on this continent who were most concerned in securing to themselves a republican neighborhood. But, as soon as the dominion of Spain was crushed, the domestic quarrels of Mexico began, and we have already shown that in the three parties formed in the first congress, were to be found the germs of all the feuds that have since vexed the republic or impeded its successful progress towards national grandeur. After the country had been so long a battle field, it was perhaps difficult immediately to accustom the people to civil rule or to free them from the baleful influence which military glory is apt to throw round individuals who render important services to their country in war. Even in our own union, where the ballot box instead of the bayonet has always controled elections, and where loyalty to the constitution would blast the effort of ambitious men to place a conqueror in power by any other means than that of peaceful election, we constantly find how difficult it is to screen the people's eyes from the bewildering glare of military glory. What then could we expect from a country in which the self-relying, self-ruling, civil idea never existed at any period of its previous history? The revolution of the North American colonies 308 VICEROYAL GOVERNMENT THE PEOPLE. was not designed to obtain liberty, for they were already free; but it was excited and successfully pursued in order to prevent the burthensome and aggressive impositions of England which would have curtailed that freedom, and, reduced us to colonial dependence as well as royal or ministerial dictation. Mexico, on the contrary, had never been free. Spain regarded the country as a mine which was to be diligently wrought, and the masses of the people as acclimated serfs whose services were the legitimate perquisites. of a court and aristocracy beyond the sea. There had been, among the kings and viceroys who controled the destinies of New Spain, men who were swayed by just and amiable views of colonial government; but the majority considered Mexico as a speculation rather than an infant colony whose progressive destiny it was their duty to foster with all the care and wisdom of christian magistrates. The minor officials misruled and peculated, as we have related in our introductory sketch of the viceroyal government. They were all men of the hour, and, even the viceroys themselves, regarded their governments on the American continent as rewards for services in Europe, enabling them to secure fortunes with which they returned to the Castilian court, forgetful of the Indian miner and agriculturist from whose sweat their wealth was coined. The Spaniard never identified himself with Mexico. His home was on the other side of the Atlantic. Few of the best class formed permanent establishments in the viceroyalty; and all of them were too much interested in maintaining both the state of society and the castes which had been created by the conquerors, to spend a thought upon the amelioration of the people. We do not desire to blacken, by our commentary, the fame of a great nation like that of Spain; yet this dreary but true portrait of national selfishness has been so often verified by all the colonial historians of America, and especially by Pazo and Zavala, in their admirable historical sketches of Castilian misrule, that we deem it fair to introduce these palliations of Mexican misconduct since the revolution. 1 The people of New Spain were poor and uneducated, — the aristocracy was rich, supercilious, and almost equally illiterate. It was a society without a middle ground, in which gold stood out. in broad relief against rags. Was such a state of barbaric semicivilization entitled or fitted to emerge at once into republicanism? 'Zavala's Hist. Rev. of Mex. 2 vols.;-and Pazo's letters on the United Provinces of South America. THE ARMY THE CHURCH. 309 Was it to be imagined that men who had always been controled, could learn immediately to control themselves? Was it to be believed that the military personages, whose ambition is as proverbial as it is natural, would voluntarily surrender the power they possessed over the masses, and retire to the obscurity and poverty of private life when they could enjoy the wealth and influence of political control, so long as they maintained their rank in the army? This would have been too much to expect from the selfdenial of creole chiefs; nor is it surprising to behold the people themselves looking towards these very men as proper persons to consolidate or shape the government they had established. It was the most natural thing conceivable to find Iturbide, Guerrero, Bustamante, Negrete, Bravo, Santa Anna, Paredes, and the whole host of revolutionary heroes succeeding each other in power, either constitutionally or by violence. The people knew no others. The military idea, military success, a name won in action, and repeated from lip to lip until the traditionary sound became a household word among the herdsmen, rancheros, vaqueros and Indians, —these were the sources of Mexican renown or popularity, and the appropriate objects of political reward and confidence. What individual among the four or five millions of Indians knew anything of the statesmen of their country who had never mixed in the revolutionary war or in the domestic brawls constantly occurring. There were no gazettes to spread their fame or merit, and even if there had been, the people were unable to buy or peruse them. Among the mixed breeds, and lower class of creoles, an equal degree of ignorance prevailed;—and thus, from the first epoch of independence, the PEOPLE ceased to be a true republican tribunal in Mexico, while the city was surrendered as the battle field of all the political aspirants who had won reputations in the camp which were to serve them for other purposes in the capital. By this means the army rose to immediate significance and became the general arbiter in all political controversies. Nor was the church, that other overshadowing influence in all countries in which religion and the state are combined, a silent spectator in the division of national power. The Roman Hierarchy, a large landholder, as will be hereafter seen in our statistical view of the country, had much at stake in Mexico, besides the mere authority which so powerful a body is always anxious to maintain over the consciences of the multitude. The church was, thus, a political element of great strength; and, combined with the army, created and sustained an important party, which has been untiring |