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274 gladly give it up to the senior vocal, or to any person who might legally receive it. He had no desire to oppose the colonization project, but had some doubt whether it was as director or as gefe político that Híjar was to receive the mission property, and he desired advice as to the proper course for him to pursue. Of course this humble tone was all assumed, yet it was rather neatly done.

Thus the tide of fortune for Padrés and his associate had begun to ebb. Instead of finding themselves invested with the civil and military authority, they were simply directors of colonization, and their powers even in that capacity were left to the tender mercies of the diputacion. The members of that body, it is true, had been a few years earlier admirers and partisans of Padrés, or at least were largely under the influence of those partisans, such as Bandini, Vallejo, and Osio; but though we may be sure the ayudante inspector exerted all his eloquence and influence to retain the favor of his old friends, his power over them seems to have been lost. Vallejo and Alvarado admit candidly that the chief reason for this defection was the fact that Padrés had brought with him twenty-one Mexicans to become administrators of the missions; whereas, under the old plans, the Californians were to have those places. I have no doubt this was, to a certain extent, the true state of the case, though I do not suppose that all the places had been promised to Mexicans. Figueroa's mission policy was substantially identical with that of Echeandía and Padrés in the past, to which the Californians had committed themselves. He had actually made a beginning of secularization; all was going well, and the Californians were filling the desirable places. Why should they favor a change in favor of strangers?

Whatever their motives — and they were not altogether selfish — the vocales had the soundest of legal