at one stroke centralizing the administration. The financial system quickly conformed, yet the blow was mitigated by withholding a while the decree changing the states into actual departments, with some additions to their number.[1] Even municipal bodies were abolished, save in leading towns,[2] and subjected more than ever to rules from governors and to other restrictions, arid finally to appointment by the central authorities, which thus took from the people every semblance of political government, and intruded them selves also in other directions, inquiring, for instance, with suspicious zeal, into the conduct of school children, and requiring lawyers to qualify at the capital.[3]
Everything was subordinated to the direction of the dictator, who indicated his will, and executed it through officials, from councillors, generals, and governors to prefects, sub-prefects, and clerks, selected mainly with regard to their loyalty to their patron, and partly from policy. Although ability and fitness were secondary considerations, they cannot be said to have been lacking; for adherents, as well as the men to be courted, belonged as a rule to the cultivated and ruling classes. The council of state included individuals who had nearly all achieved distinction in ecclesiastic, legislative, and gubernatorial branches.[4]
- ↑ Decree dated Sept. 21st. Id., 87-8. In course of the year Aguascalientes was rewarded by separation into a distinct department; Sierra Gorda was made a territory; likewise Isla del Carmen in Yucatan, the better to control the turbulent peninsula and Tehuantepec, in view of the importance acquired by the proposed interoceanic route and the turmoils in this region. For limits, capitals, etc., see Dublan and Lozano, Leg. Mex., vi. 427, 709-10, 796, 811, vii. 61-2; Soc. Max. Geog. Bolet., iii. 445; National, July 15, Dec. 23, 1853, etc. There was also a change in the federal district, and a vain appeal from Huasteca. Comments in Azárate, Reseña, 1-15.
- ↑ The seats of governors and prefects. Description of uniforms to be used by them in council and at ceremonies, with rules for sea-ports, in Méx., Col. Ley., Dec. y Órd., 1853, 76, 232-3, 340.
- ↑ General Diaz, Biog., MS., 68-9, suffered in common with other provincials from this restriction.
- ↑ Among them the president, Bishop Munguía of Michoacan, who had given no small impulse to the revolution, and achieved a literary reputation by his voluminous theologic writings, whereof the Obras Literarias alone exist in three series on my shelves. Also the influential Governor Múgica of Puebla, the ex-ministers Esteva and Cuevas, and Agustin de Iturbide. List in Arch. Hex., Actas, ii. 314-16; Méx. . Legisl. Mej., 1853, 34-9, 88-9. Supple-
