CHAPTER IV
THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO: ELECTIONS
Tracing the details of Mexican politics before the Diaz régime gives no picture of principles or system. Each triumph announced is followed at a short interval by what appears to be the overthrow of all the triumph stood for. Nor indeed did the government, which brought peace in the late '70s, mean triumph of principle. Of the principles for which it stood—no reelection and free suffrage—one was overthrown by the leader who proclaimed it and the other never was given a trial. There was established a system of government that brought peace, freedom from pillage in the name of the people, and at least a greater measure of freedom for the economic development of the country, but the political ideals of the revolution were brushed aside and ignored.
How Mexico came to the belief that peace at any price was the first need of the republic is the theme of a great part of its early history. In the generation following the revolution against Spain the contests had been between the Conservatives, or supporters of the church, and the Liberals. These were divisions on principle but ones in which the conflicts of opinion were settled, as a rule, by violence and not by appeal to the ballot. At the restoration of the republic in 1867, the French intervention having come to an end, the Liberal
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