Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/333

Rh to the advantage and support of so inestimable a good; which may further insure the public tranquillity; which may tend to the aggrandisement of the republic, and may reinstate an unfortunate portion of its inhabitants in the sacred rights which nature gave to them, and the nation should protect by wise and just laws, conformably with the dispositions of the thirtieth article of the constituent act, employing the extrordinary faculties which have been conceded to me, I have resolved to decree—

1. Slavery is and shall remain abolished in the republic.

2. In consequence, those who have hitherto been regarded as slaves, are free.

3. Whensoever the condition of the treasury shall permit, the owners of the slaves shall be indemnified according to the terms which the law may dispose.

Mexico, Sept.  15, 1829.

1.—Slavery is abolished, without any exception, throughout the whole republic.

2. The owners of the slaves manumitted by the present law, or by the decree of September 15, 1829, shall be indemnified for their interests in them, to be estimated according to the proofs which may be presented of their personal qualities; to which effect, one appraiser shall be appointed by the commissary general, or the person performing his duties, and another by the owner; and, in case of disagreement, a third, who shall be appointed by the respective constitutional alcalde; and from the decision thus made, there shall be no appeal. The indemnification mentioned in this article shall not be extended to the colonists of Texas, who may have taken part in the revolution in that department.

3. The owners to whom the original documents drawn up with regard to the proofs mentioned in the preceding article, shall be delivered gratis—shall themselves present them to the supreme government, which will authorise the general treasury to issue to them the corresponding orders for the amount of their respective interests.

4. The payment of the said orders shall be made in the manner which may seem most equitable to the government, with the view of reconciling the rights of individuals with the actual state of the public finances.}}

April 5, 1837.

The Constitution of 1843, or Bases organicas de la Republica Mejicana, of that year, declares that: "No one is a slave in the territory of the nation, and that any slave who may be introduced, shall be considered free and remain under the protection of the laws."—Title 2d.

The Constitution of 1847—which, in fact, is the old Federal Constitution of 1824—does not reenact this clause; but, in the Acta de Reformas annexed to it in 1847, declares, "that every Mexican, either by birth or naturalization, who has attained the age of twenty years, who possesses the means of an honest livelihood, and who has not been condemned by legal process to any infamous punishment, is a citizen of the United Mexican States."— Acta de Reformas, Article 1. "In order to secure the rights of man which the Constitution recognizes, a law shall fix the guaranties of liberty, security, property and equality, which all the inhabitants of the republic enjoy, and shall establish the means requisite to make them effective."— ''Id. Article'' 5. The third article provides that "the exercise of the rights of citizenship are suspended by habitual intemperance; by professional gambling or vagabondage; by religious or ders; by legal interdict in virtue of trial for those crimes which forfeit citizenship, and by refusal to fulfil public duties imposed by popular nomination" (nombramiento popular.)