Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/280

260 up two parties; one in favour of absolute independence of either Mexico or Spain or even of a federative union of Guatemalian States, and the other in favour of the plan of Iguala which, it is well known, proposed the establishment of a monarchy, and invited the Bourbons to the throne.

The old Spanish party, in the choice of difficulties, acceded to conditions of a temporizing nature and became advocates to the plan of Iguala. Leon, capital of Nicaragua, and Comayagua, capital of Honduras, also declared for the same form of government; but the majority of the towns and settlements of each of these provinces adhered, in their proclamations, to the General Act of Independence, as declared by the junta.—The supreme government was now placed in the hands of a provisional junta, in the independent or federative interest, until a more regular form of government should be settled by a congress, which was then being convened for that purpose. Such was the state of affairs, when on the 19th October, 1821,