Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/726

706 of the regulars to the bishops, and laws passed affecting their jurisdiction and internal administration, and regulating the appointment to doctrinas of those duly qualified. The outcry was loud and long, and much scandal ensued, but the king and pope conjointly had raised up a great power in the land, and the objections of the frairsfriars [sic] to royal cédulas and the commands of the bishops were so persistently urged, and their own claim to privileges so ably argued, that modifications of the restrictions were obtained.

While the regular orders were thus united in their opposition to church and state, it was otherwise among themselves. Dissensions between different orders and discord among the members of individual institutions were incessant. In the internal government of the orders the two prominent causes of disagreement were the election of provincials and other officers, and the interminable quarrels between Spanish and creole members. Spanish friars who had taken the habit in Europe displayed an ungenerous rivalry toward members of orders who, though of their own race, had been born in America, and would have excluded them from the right to hold office. Such views were indignantly opposed by the creoles, who denied that they were in any way inferior to the Europeans, while the latter refused to admit them on terms of equality. In order to adjust differences which led to actual animosity between the two classes, the system of alternation in office was established by