July, 1855, at great personal peril, Juarez joined the army of Alvarez and marched with him to the capital. He had previously met with harsh treatment, and had even been imprisoned and sent into exile, by Santa Anna, whose overthrow he now saw so triumphantly accomplished.
His history now becomes a part of that of his country, for he was identified with every prominent political movement from this period until his death, in 1872. Alvarez (as we have already seen) was proclaimed President of the Republic in October, 1855, and appointed Juarez his "Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs." The sweeping laws of reform instituted by this enemy to the Church were sanctioned by the constituent Congress, which met in February, 1856, and, after a year's deliberations, adopted the famous "Constitution of 1857." The first National Congress, in 1812, had declared in their constitution, first, that the Catholic religion only should be allowed in the State, and that the press, while "free for all purposes of science and political economy, was not free for the discussion of religious matters." In the forty-five years that had passed since then the people of Mexico had learned a bitter lesson, and resolved to profit by it. The representatives of the people now declared not only the right of everybody to any religion he chose to adopt, but to full and free discussion. The celebrated "Law of Juarez" abolished the whole system of class legislation, suppressed the military and ecclesiastical fueros—the privileged and special tribunals and charters of the army and the clergy—and established, for the first time in Mexico, equality of the citizens before the law.
[A. D. 1858.] Comonfort was not equal to the occasion this crisis in the affair of nations demanded. He turned traitor to his party (the Liberals) and gave the government into the hands of the Church party. On the 17th of Decem-
