the annexed figures. The electoral districts, according to the census, contained 8,836,411 inhabitants. The total number of votes cast was 12,361, of which Juarez received 5,837, Diaz 3,555, and Lerdo 2,874. The re-election of Juarez was the signal for the discontented of the other two parties, into which the Liberals were divided, to resort to arms. Some had hoped that his re-election would be the sign of peace, others had contended that it would be a signal for civil war. "The truth is," says the historian, whose narrative we are mainly following [1] (himself a Mexican), "that the peace in Mexico will never be consolidated until they learn to respect invariably the law, and so long as those who lose continue to appeal to arms."
Well may the disinterested spectator have concluded, with those foreign leaders who united to intervene in Mexican politics, that the Mexicans could not—nor would they ever be able to—govern themselves. The friend of Mexico, viewing the affairs of that time at a distance, may well have despaired of the political regeneration of her people. More than a thousand men—without regarding previous revolutions—had been killed in the year 1871, in a time of peace; yet these headstrong leaders again rushed to arms, prepared to desolate the country in a prolonged fratricidal strife! On the 8th of November General Diaz issued a manifesto at his hacienda of Noria—hence called the "Plan of Noria"—in which he called for an "Assembly," to bring about a new order of things. Outbreaks and rebellions followed close upon this manifesto, and the end of 1871 saw the country again in disturbance, rebels swarming everywhere, and Diaz hiding in the mountains about Mexico. In an encounter between Juarez and Diaz troops, in the last days of December, nearly nine hundred men were put hors de combat, and
- ↑ Payno: "Compendio de la Historia de Mexico."
