Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/65

Rh, and counter-revolutions for the presidency, between Gomez Pedraza, Guerrero, and Bustamante, in the years 1828–30, made no impression, in fact were hardly known, in California. Other national measures, with a single exception, require no special attention.

The exception was in the matter of utilizing California as a penal colony for Mexican criminals. A small number of convicts had arrived, as we have seen, in 1825, and now orders were issued to send them from all parts of the republic. These instructions, which the Mexican authorities had the assurance to regard as a means for improving the morals of the convicts and for colonizing California, were much more promptly obeyed, it is safe to say, than if they had been calculated to benefit the territory; and within a year more than a hundred criminals had been sentenced to presidio work in this northern Botany Bay. Echeandía protested rather feebly, as soon as the news