Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/676

656 State sequestered the whole property of the church, and undertook in return to make an adequate provision for the ministers of religion. This measure was strenuously resisted by the Cabildo, which even went so far as to threaten the Congress and Governor with excommunication, if they persevered in their attempt to enforce it. The point of right was referred, at last, to the General Congress, which decided that the ecclesiastical authorities could not legally be called upon to take the oath of fidelity to the new code, upon conditions so detrimental to their own interests. The Constitution was accordingly sworn without the Seventh Article, (which, however, is still retained as a part of the printed text,) and this prudent resolution put a stop, for the time, to all farther innovation. Enough had been done, however, to excite a spirit of inveterate hostility between the Ecclesiastical and Civil Authorities, and, up to this day, the contest has been continued. The Governor, Don Prisciliano Sanchez, died a short time before I reached Jalisco, in a state of excommunication, as one of the editors of the Astro, the paper in which the doctrines, to which I have already alluded, were promulgated; and his successor, Don Antonio Cumplido, is, I believe, involved in the same sentence. All the advocates of moderate church reforms in Mexico regret this state of things in Guadalajara. The authorities, by their conduct, have given the Cabildo but too fair a plea for crying down every attempt at