Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/172

146 those courts shall be conducted in them to a final hearing and to the execution of the sentence. Every male person either born in the republic or naturalized, who attains the age of twenty years, possesses the means of honest livelihood, and has not been sentenced by legal process for any infamous crime, is declared to be a citizen of Mexico, and enjoys the right to vote, to petition, to meet others in the discussion of public affairs and to belong to the national guard. The exercise of these rights of citizenship may however be suspended in consequence of confirmed intemperance, professional gambling, a vagabond life, the assumption of religious orders, by legal interdict, in virtue of crimes which cause loss of citizenship, and by inexcusable refusal to serve in public employment when appointed by the people.

The federal constitution of 1824, introduced into Mexico, as we have seen, two general orders of tribunals; those of a federal or national character, and those of the states. The power of these judiciaries was deposited in a supreme court, and in circuit and district courts; and causes were taken from one to the other, by appeals, or in other words, passed by grades from the lowest to the highest, according to the nature of the transactions they involved. The jurisdiction of these courts was of course very extensive; yet it was not paramount or universal over all classes of Mexican society, inasmuch as large numbers of Mexicans were exempted by fueros or special privileged jurisdictions, from the control of the constitutional courts. The fueros were chiefly those of the military and ecclesiastics. There was a common military fuero in civil and criminal matters, which authorized the parties to have their causes tried before the commanding generals, and, on appeals, before the supreme tribunal of War and Marine, whilst there was another right of trial, or jurisdiction for military misdemeanors, before the council of war of general officers. There were, besides these, three special fueros of war;—one of artillery, one of engineers, and another of the active militia. The ecclesiastical fuero, gave an appeal from the bishop to the metropolitan, or from the archbishop to the nearest prelate;—if the metroplitan commenced a cause, an appeal lay to the bishop who was his nearest neighbor; and, on a third trial, to another neighboring episcopate. Notwithstanding these military and ecclesiastical fueros were permitted to exist by special favoritism after the republic was formed, the Mexicans suppressed, after 1824, the fueros of the