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428 being unpopular, he might as well have been all three, so far as results are concerned.

On his arrival in California he had to encounter the ordinary inherent difficulties of his position, which were by no means trifling, as had been discovered by all his predecessors. As a Mexican he had to meet a strong prejudice, and as a centralist a still stronger opposition, there being a party of young men in the country who claimed to be ardent federalists, and for whom revolution, as a word, had no terrors. Chico succeeded Figueroa, a man distinguished for his arts of flattery and conciliation; having himself none of those arts, and no extraordinary ability with which to overcome difficulties. He was perhaps personally petulant and disagreeable; at any rate, he made enemies and no friends, and the current was started against him. His pretty 'niece,' Doña Cruz, turned out to be his mistress; and the respectability of Monterey was easily persuaded to consider itself shocked by such immorality in high places. The restrictive bando of May 11th on commerce may have displeased a powerful element among the foreigners, and his persecution of Abel Stearns, of which and its motives little is really known, tended in the same direction, though there is very little in support of the charge that he was specially hostile to foreigners.