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282 certain leading gubernatorial and other positions, although not always with prudence. Paredes, for instance, was disposed of with the comandancia general of Mexico, greatly to the discontent of this now popularized revolutionist. Finances required special and delicate investigation, with a view to conform to the popular clamor for reduction of taxes and relief of industries, yet without hampering the treasury too much. One step in this direction was to check the enormous leakage in the shape of smuggling and the evasion of just tax payments. Economy, however, was a difficult task under the involved state of affairs inherited from the late administration. Echeverría abandoned the portfolio of finance in January, Palacio surrendered it in despair two months later, and Luis de la Rosa held it only till August. A loan was indispensable for giving a semblance of impulse to national defences, but the chambers dared not yield readily to a demand which had so lately proved a main cause for revolution. Yet the mere prospect of fresh imposts was enough to raise a thoughtless outcry, in which joined lustily the horde of malecontents roused by official pruning operations, and the government was assailed for its very lack of power or means to put an immediate end to afflicting evils, such as the continued raid of Indians into the northern provinces. They even used against it, as an argument with the ignorant, such occurrences as the transit of Mercury, and an earthquake of great severity which, on April 7th, did damage in different parts