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448 estancos, was also postponed; the only important one being that of tobacco. The ninth and tenth were reserved for action after the constitution should have been enacted. The eleventh, calling for the reëstablishment of the Jesuits, was rejected almost unanimously. A different result could hardly have been expected from a chamber constituted as that was. Indeed, a number of the American deputies had objected to the proposition, and had affixed their names to it only in deference to its author, Deputy Duarez; and one actually refused to sign it.

About the time this discussion terminated, there arrived at Cádiz on a British line-of-battle ship a number of deputies regularly elected in New Spain. They were mostly ecclesiastics, canons of divers cathedrals, the deputy from Vera Cruz being one exception; and their credentials being approved, on the 27th of February they took their seats. A few days after, the venerable Doctor José Beye de Cisneros, one of the representatives for Mexico recently come, presented a memorandum on the origin of the insurrection in New Spain, attributing the movement to the great love of the people for Spain, and their fear of being turned over to France. Cisneros wanted the provinces of America to have a certain autonomy, and proposed measures toward this end, namely, the creation of a provincial legislature, and a supreme legislature in each dominion, the latter to represent the government of Spain, and the eventual declaration of the independence of Spanish America—that is to