Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/103

 MEXICO. 71 this was increased by the care with which its members were usually selected, and by the pains that were taken to keep them distinct from the natives in interest and feelings. They were forbidden to intermarry with a Creole, (as were the Viceroys and their children ;) or to engage in trade, or even to hold property in the country in which they resided. As some compensation, they were entrusted with the vice-regal power, in the event of the Viceroy''s decease, which was held by the Regent, or eldest Oidor, until a new Viceroy was ap- pointed ; and enjoyed a number of other privileges, which left them but little reason to regard the position of any of their countrymen as more advantageous, (even in a pecuniary sense,) than their own. In the more extensive Colonies, branches of the Audiencia were established in the provinces most remote from the seat of government,* but these exer- cised no independent jurisdiction, and an appeal lay from them, in all cases, to the Audiencia of the capital. The " Recopilacion de las Leyes de las Indias,'' or General collection of the laws of the Indies, is the name given, in Spanish jurisprudence, to that heterogeneous mass of statutes, by which, during the last three centuries, the decisions of these tribunals were supposed to be determined. These sta^- tutes were, originally, nothing more than Decrees upon dif- ferent subjects, emanating from the King, or from the Coun- cil of the Indies, often contradictory, and generally uncon- nected with each other, but bound up at last together, and published in four folio volumes. No pains having been taken to class, or reduce them to any thing like system, they were full of the most glaring inconsistencies; and, as every new case became the subject of a new Decree, which, from the moment of its publication, had the force of law, it is hardly possible to conceive a more complete chaos than that presented by the legislative code of America As early as dolid, Guadalajara, and Chihuahua.
 * As in Mexico, where three Audiencias were established, at Valla-