Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/66

Rh to be done at once. A republic, though alien to all the habits and feelings of the nation, seemed evidently necessary, because no possible monarch existed, and because no other system could make it the interest of a sufficient number of persons to maintain the government; but this did not end the difficulties. The centralized type of republic was ardently desired by the oligarchy as likely to prove controllable, and by all the monarchists as a sloping path toward their goal; but the friends of Itúrbide and the enemies of privilege—strongest at a distance from the capital—fought against it, and at length, as the federal system, about which only the vaguest notions were entertained, promised more oﬂiees and seemed more likely to hold the country together, it was decided upon.

To meet the crisis one individual, taking the constitution of the United States as a basis,4 drafted the required instrument in three days; and so an untrained and uneducated nation found itself provided with a complicated mixture of democracy and privilege, liberty and intolerance, progress and reaction, which paralyzed itself by combining such antagonistic elements, omitted the safeguard of a supreme court like ours, and showed its own inadequacy by providing that in emergencies the President might be given "extraordinary powers," or in other words become a dictator. In short, the government was organized as a permanent revolution. There was much enthusiasm, however, over this triumph of nationality, and on New Year's day, 1825, the ﬁrst constitutional Congress assembled. The treasury was now full of borrowed English gold; and i as every one hoped the new system might be developed in the direction he preferred—all agreed that an era of peace, joy and prosperity had at length arrived.

Victoria was elected President. His frank, ruddy, bronzed face, peering out of gray whiskers and curly gray hair, looked happy and encouraging, but soon the mass of the nation felt once more cheated; for although Bravo had been the candidate of the oligarchy, Victoria—yielding to the pressure of that element—gave it a preponderance in the administration. A multitude of people were exasperated to ﬁnd the old privileged classes again in control, and the execution of Itﬁr—hide under an illegal law—for he had returned to Mexico—infuriated his partisans. Worse yet, the oligarchy denied the