Page:The War with Mexico, Vol 1.djvu/72

Rh to the confusion. President and nation simply drifted, and the rocks were near. Before long the general government was practically ignored except at the capital, and the heads of the secret societies wielded the real power. Guerrero even allowed the oligarchy, his deadliest foe, to alienate him from the common people, the source of his strength. He became almost as isolated as Mahomet's coffin; and then—as soon as ambition could disguise itself with a programme—he fell.

Mainly owing to the good-will of Guerrero, the Vice-President was General Anastasio Bustamante, a heavy, dull, rather kindly and fairly honest aristocrat, though nominally a moderate Federalist. When appointed by Guerrero to command the army of reserve at Jalapa, the principal military force in the country, he exclaimed on taking leave of the President, "Never will I unsheathe my sword against General Guerrero," but within a year (December, 1829) he did it; and, though a beneﬁciary of the Acordada riot, he revolted against the government in the name of the constitution. As a matter of fact his rebellion was merely another eﬂ'ort of the privileged classes, a revised edition of Montaño's, and the army received its pay from the money chests of the oligarchs. Little opposition was encountered, for Guerrero had let Delilah shear him, the Acordada episode and much other misconduct had completely discredited the radical Federalists, and the Federalists in general—who had raised Bustamante from a political prison to the second place in the nation—Could not believe, after his fresh protestations of loyalty to the constitution, that he would betray them. The President, ﬁnding nobody to lean upon, ﬂed to his old haunts in the south, was treacherously captured and was shot; and meanwhile, on the ﬁrst of January, 1830, Bustamante took up the reins. Greed, corruption, imprudence, evil passions and lawlessness had ruined the cause of democracy, and Victoria's experiment of letting aristocrats administer a professedly popular system had to be tried again.

Bustamante opened Congress with a bit of the fashionable hypocrisy, asserting that a "sacred Constitution" had placed him in power; but he showed that what interested him was "the wishes of the army," and the army reciprocated this affection. Alamán, who had been Victoria's chief adviser at