and that of the 17th of March designating the public functionaries who were required to take the oath to support the national constitution, greatly irritated the clergy and their partisans. Their objection to the constitution and the law was not so much for what they said as for what they did not say. The fundamental code had failed to establish the catholic religion as that of the state; in fact, religion had been left out of the instrument; the law of the 17th of March made no mention of the ecclesiastics, and they refused to recognize the constitution.[1]
The very existence of the organic law had been endangered by the hostile attitude of Blancarte, who refused obedience to the government at Zapopan in Jalisco, and was joined by many; but soon after, Parrodi brought him to terms, and he submitted. This was Comonfort's third triumph.
The conservatives called, like the rest of their fellow-citizens, to take part in the elections kept themselves away from the polls, several of them saying that they would not mix with the rabble, nor engage in electioneering trickery, but preferred to act without the pale of the law. The progressionists resolved to choose no man without knowing what were his political views; but this not being a custom in Mexico, they had to fall back on the candidate's political record. The liberal press maintained that the philosophical revolution recently carried through was a precursor of peace and good-will, that party hatred and persecution should disappear, and only
- ↑ The law declared that officials refusing to subscribe to the oath would forfeit their positions under the government. Id., iii. 268-71.
to fifteen dollars. The acts declared to be of the civil status were birth, marriage, adoption or arrogation, priesthood, and the profession of a religious vow, whether provisional or perpetual, and death. The record of every act of life, and with it legitimacy of marriage and birth and succession to property, was formerly in charge of the church; the registration of deaths and burials and the control of cemeteries, which by the old laws belonged to the church, were now placed in the hands of the civil authority in each district and town. It is thus seen that the clergy were shorn of an immense power. Archivo Mex., Col. Ley., ii. 692-739.
