Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/195

 MEXICO. 159 the Congress, to which measure Teran had recourse on the 15th of December, 1815. There is no act in the history of the Revolution that has been more severely blamed than this, and none, perhaps, that has been less fairly judged. It cannot be denied that, by dissolving the Congress, Teran injured the general cause, by depriving the Insurgents of a point de reunion, which might, afterwards, have been of essential use ; but it has never been proved that it was possible for him to do otherwise, or that the district under his command could, in any way, have sup- ported the additional charge, which the arrival of the Con- gress must have brought upon it. The fact is, that the members of that assembly, amongst the other articles of their Constitution, had assigned to themselves, as Deputies, a yearly salary of eight thousand dollars each ; a resolution which Bustamante, (the historian of the Revolution, and himself a Deputy,) justifies, by saying that the salary was merely no- minal, and that two thousand dollars were the utmost that any one hoped to receive. Be this as it may, it is certain that whatever could be construed into public property, either as taken from the enemy, or as the produce of fines paid by the different Haciendas, (in the nature of black mail,) became liable for the payment of these sums, whenever the Congress chose to determine that it should be so ; and moreover, the assembly was so well aware of this fact, that it always endea- voured to get the management of the public purse out of the hands of the Military Commandants, in order to entrust it to Intendants of its own nomination. Unfortunately, the man selected for this office at Tehuacan, (Martinez) was particu- larly strict and unyielding, (Bustamante calls him cosqulloso, ticklish,) in every thing connected with his department ; and contrived to involve himself, almost immediately, in a dispute with Teran, by demanding possession of the money, and stores, which that general had, with infinite pains, succeeded in collecting. In this claim, Martinez was supported by the