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274 equanimity the various trials to which he had been subjected.

Those trials it seemed were appointed to attend him further, even if it had pleased the Almighty to prolong his existence. Shortly before his death, the Mexican legislature passed a law declaring that no one should hold any office under the republic who was not a natural born citizen; and thus he was, among others, deprived of the offices he had held with credit to himself and advantage to the state. If the measure were directed against him personally, it was of short operation, and political intrigues could not avail to deprive him of the consciousness of having fulfilled his duties honourably, or of the claim he had to leave on the remembrance of future ages.