Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/343

CH. XXII.] by the Congress, it was agreed that it should await the decision of the Papal See. Such was the state of the business when I left the country; nor should I have attached to it any importance had I not understood that the difficulty in question in some measure affected the president, inasmuch as he had been thought to have sided with the Delgado party against that of the ecclesiastics in general.

Be this as it might, the disturbances which have since agitated the country are chiefly ascribable to the facts alluded to; and I have mentioned them, on this occasion, because they appeared to me, upon my leaving the capital, to be the only subject on which a difference of opinion might be said to exist. The jealousy of the president's power and of his adherents, which included the majority of the most ancient and respectable families, was publicly admitted, but then the leaders of the opposite party talked so much about liberality and love of country, and in fact had ventured,