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388 of San Fernando, where the remains were deposited, with religious rites. As a mark of appreciation of the purity, uprightness, and ability shown by Galvez during his rule in Mexico, the king on the 26th of March, 1785, decreed to relieve him of a residencia, and consequently his estate of the expenses incident thereto.

It was at this interesting period in American history—1783—that Cárlos' principal secretary of state, Pedro Abarca de Bolea, conde de Aranda, having returned with a leave of absence from Paris where he went by express order to sign the general treaty of peace with Great Britain by virtue of which the independence of the United States of America was afterward recognized by George III. and his government, made a sweeping suggestion to his sovereign. Entertaining a favorable opinion of the state of learning and culture prevailing among the Spanish Americans, he recommended the creation of three independent monarchies in the king's American dominions, each under a prince of the Spanish reigning family, Cárlos for himself and his successors assuming the title of emperor, and the latter for all time to be recognized by the American monarchs as the head of the family. Marriages of the new sovereigns and