Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/77

Rh presidios, and certain classes of troops, being favored or slighted.

During the Spanish rule, and the interregnum that followed, the provincial finances had been managed — for the most part honestly, if not always with great skill, so far as accounts were concerned — by the habilitados of the respective companies, one of whom in the later days had been named administrator, with very little authority over the others. On the establishment of the republic, Herrera had been sent, as we have seen, in 1825, as comisario to take charge of the territorial finances as a subordinate of the comisario general of the western states Sonora and Sinaloa. The instructions to Herrera are not extant; but it is evident from subsequent communications of himself and his superiors that he had exclusive control of the treasury department, and was independent of the gefe político, except that like any other citizen he was within the civil and criminal jurisdiction of that officer. The habilitados, the only persons in the territory qualified for the task, served as Herrera's subordinates for the collection of revenue at the presidios, so that locally there was no change. Whether the comisario appointed them voluntarily or in obedience to his instructions does not appear; but their duty was simply to collect the revenues and pay them over to Herrera, their duty as company paymasters in disbursing funds subsequently re-obtained from the comisaría being a distinct matter.

Naturally the habilitados were jealous from the first of the authority exercised by their new master, and were displeased at every innovation on the old method under Estrada's administration. Moreover, Herrera was a stranger, and worse yet a Mexican, being therefore liable to distrust as not properly appreciative of Californian ways. He was also a friend and relative of Captain Gonzalez, and involved to some extent in the quarrel between that officer and Estrada, which circumstance contributed not a