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116 of government, perchance professed by a party most frequently perish with those who upheld them. You have read the wise intentions published to the world by this or that ephemeral president and his government, with regard to general tolerance, and the introduction of those principles of popular education and of internal policy, which can alone render the Mexicans capable of self-government. You have heard of the excellence of the police: the energy with which order was restored upon the public roads: of summary justice being inflicted upon those who transgressed the law. I should lay it down as a rule, that you never need believe more than a quarter of that which you might be led to infer from the inflated style and mendacious language of whatever is published here: but yet there may have been some foundation for what was asserted at such a date — at the same time that I would assure you, that the greatest probability exists of there not being a single word of truth in the statement, when applied to the real position of affairs, six months after. How was it when we were in Mexico? Santa Anna, a man of but little genius or talent, but cleverer than those about him in the low arts of intrigue, and into whose well-laid traps more than one old associate had fallen, was at the head of the reform government as president. The preceding year, General Duran had attempted to get up a revolution in favour of the so called “privileged classes." This year Canalizza had run off to the eastward in the manner I have described; and, under what patriotic cry I forget, had issued a pronunciamiento, proposing to set up a counter government, according to the custom of the country. If I mistake not. General Bravo was down in the southwest, with the same intentions. The vice president, Gomez Ferias, was at couteau tiré with the president; and the latter had, under the veil of leave of absence from the capital, for the restoration of his health, gone off in a very bad humour, to pout at his estate near Jalapa; where the general belief was, that he was brewing some mischief of his own, in favour of the army and the church, both of which were decidedly under a cloud in the actual state