Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/241

 MEXICO. 203 plan of Iguala altogether, and to have a Constitutional monar- chy, with a Prince of the House of Bourbon at its head. The Republicans, who denied the right of the army to pledge the nation by the plan of Iguala at all, and wished for a Central or Federal Republic : and the Iturbidists, who adopted the plan of Iguala, with the exception of the article in favour of the Bourbons, in lieu of whom they wished to place Iturbide himself upon the throne. Upon the merits of the respective creeds of these parties, I shall make no comments ; each probably thought that it had good reasons for adopting that which it did adopt, and each, certainly, hoped to derive considerable advantages from the triumph of its own. The Bourbonists soon ceased to exist as a party, the Cortes of Madrid having, by a Decree dated the 13th of February, 1822, declared the Treaty of Cordova " to be illegal, null and void, in as far as the Spanish Government and its sub- jects were concerned," thereby precluding the possibility of the acceptance of the crown of Mexico by a junior member of the Royal Family. The struggle was thenceforward con- fined to the Iturbidists and the Republicans, between whom a violent contest was long carried on, — the Congress accusing the Regency, and its President, of wasteful expenditure, and Iturbide as loudly accusing the Congress of an intention to destroy " the most meritoriovis part of the community" — the army, by not providing funds for its support. These bicker- ings were increased by the introduction of a project in the Congress, for reducing the troops of the line, from sixty, to twenty-thousand men, and supplying the deficiency by calling out an auxiliary force of thirty thousand militia. This mea- sure was most strenuously opposed by Iturbide, but was, nevertheless, carried by a large majority, in the beginning of April. From that moment his friends saw that his influence was on the wane, and that if they wished ever to see him upon the throne, the attempt must be made before the me-