Page:Mexico and its reconstruction.djvu/49

Rh monopolies, except certain ones which the state might set up.

A degree of responsibility was given to the individual states similar to that given the states of the American Union. They had like limitations. In law their governments were described as republican, representative, and popular. They had the same general divisions of powers as the central government. The legislative power in the majority of the states was vested in a single representative body called a Congress. The members, in most cases, were chosen indirectly for terms of two years. The executive power was in the hands of a governor chosen almost without exception indirectly and serving four years. The majority of the states had supreme courts with a system of inferior courts and judges.

In short, the Mexican constitution of 1857 set up a frame of government that had all the nominal guarantees necessary for the establishment of a popular government of the sort that had been created north of the Rio Grande in a sister republic, whose constitution Mexican statesmen, almost without exception, have admired.

The theory of the Mexican constitution was never put into practice in either the central government or the states. The fundamental concept of the division of powers between the three departments was never observed. In the period of confusion between the issuance