Page:The rise and fall of the Emperor Maximilian.djvu/117

Rh to unite under the imperial sceptre this scattered cluster of vast provinces, almost unknown one to the other, for want of ways of communication favourable to trade. History taught him that the sacrifices made by the states farthest from the centre and separated from the capital by vast deserts, had resulted only from a desire to defend their independence against foreigners, and from no real sympathy with Mexico or with Juarez, from whom they had but little favour or assistance to hope for. Every state capital had its own administration and its own individual interests. Since the war of independence, Mexico (not to speak of the reign of Iturbide, the first emperor, shot in 1823) had been more of a federation than a republic. Moreover, if the military efforts of the crown had failed when the troops were regularly paid, and when a civil war was rending the interior of the United States, what could be hoped for in the future, now that the national treasury, forced to provide for the defence of eighteen hundred leagues of territory, was avowedly exhausted, and the victorious Yankees no longer concealed the hostility of their sentiments? Only two chances of safety were left to the tottering monarchy: one would have been, instead of pretending to reign over an imaginary kingdom exposed on every side, to concentrate all his active forces in the richest and most populous central states, to carefully preserve his communications for export and import with both seas, and then to wait for better times before he tried to regain territory. The other plan would have been, to return to the constitution of 1857, and to proclaim the seventeen states free and independent under the aegis of a sovereign ruler. This federal organisation would have been the only measure to calm the easily offended susceptibilities of the American Union.