Spanish conquest, were abolished. The fueros were ecclesiastical and military courts in which all clerical and military law breakers, and also many offenders against church and state, were tried. Half the crimes in Mexico were committed by men thus exempt from the civil courts.[1] The abolition of the fueros caused such a storm of protest from the conservatives, that Alvarez was forced out of office and Comonfort, a prominent liberal, but a compromiser, took his place.
Juarez, however, remained in the administration, and the revolutionary program was continued. In 1856 a law was passed providing for the sale of the great church estates on reasonable terms. The proceeds went to the church, the object of the law being, not confiscation, but distribution of the land to small farmers. During that year, $20,000,000 worth of land passed into private hands; but people of small means dared not face the wrath of the church, so that the sales, largely to foreign capitalists, served to establish a new landed aristrocracy.
In the same year, a constitutional Congress was called and the famous constitution of 1857 was framed. The church, meanwhile, was excommunicating all who bought her lands, and a ferocious papal bull was sent from Rome, denouncing the government and ordering disobedience to its decrees.[2]
With the promulgation of the new constitution, the conservatives abandoned parliamentary procedure, and three years of very bitter civil war ensued. Comonfort deserted the revolutionists, and Juarez took his place. Benito Juarez, called the Lincoln
13
