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70 time when the presidency was transferred without violence and under the law—General Arista peaceably succeeding General Herrera. But Arista was deposed and banished in the next two years, and in the next three months there were four presidents of the republic! Of the original and great leaders in the War of Independence—namely, Hidalgo, Morelos, and Matamoros—all were shot. The same fate befell both of the emperors, and also two of the more noted presidents—Guerrero and Miramon. Of the other presidents, nearly all at one time or other were formally banished or compelled to flee from the state in order to escape death or imprisonment.

In 1846 came the American war and invasion, when the United States, with "one fell swoop," as it were, took from Mexico considerably more than one half of all its territory—923,835 square miles out of a former total of 1,663,535. It is true that payment was tendered and accepted for about one thirty-fourth part (the Gadsden purchase) of what was taken, but appropriation and acceptance of payment were alike compulsory. For this war the judgment of all impartial history will undoubtedly be that there was no justification or good reason on the part of the United States. It may be that what happened was an inevitable outcome of the law of the survival of the fittest, as exemplified