Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/92

76 appointed Francisco Javier de Lizana y Beaumont, archbishop of Mexico, to be viceroy in the place of Garibay, whose election had not been confirmed by the home government, and whose elevation could not be deemed legal. On the 19th of July Garibay surrendered the place, having been nominally the head of the government for a period of ten months, but in reality the political tool of Oidor Aguirre, who, in some alarm at the change, requested leave to retire from office four days previous to Lizana's installation. Garibay returned to private life and poverty. From the latter, however, he was relieved by the generosity of Yermo, who made him a monthly allowance of five hundred pesos. He was afterward decorated with the grand cross of Cárlos III., and granted a pension of ten thousand pesos a year. He died on the 17th of July, 1815, at the age of eighty-six.

During his brief administration he exerted himself in raising remittances for Spain, and when news of the victory at Baylen arrived, he issued a proclamation, on October 4, 1808, asking for war contributions. His call in the general enthusiasm was liberally responded to, and the subscriptions, headed by the archbishop with 30,000 pesos, amounted to 716,346 pesos by the end of the year. A few days after its publication the Spanish man-of-war San Justo arrived at the port of Vera Cruz in command of the marqués del Real Tesoro, who had been commissioned by the junta of Seville to obtain all the funds that could be raised in New Spain and other American colonies. At this time there were fourteen and a half millions pesos in the treasury, nine millions of which, together with two millions more contributed by wealthy individuals, were at once transported to Vera Cruz for shipment to Spain.