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36 guaranteed by recognized assets. In these transactions the treasury suffered heavy losses. The secretary of the department thought to cover with the ordinary revenue the appropriations approved by congress for the following year, amounting to a little over fifteen and a half millions; but he found it impossible, and the payments of the dividends on the foreign debt had to be suspended.

Those who from the beginning of the independence had opposed the third clause of the plan of Iguala kept up the agitation against the Spaniards, all of whom were supposed to be accomplices of the Arenas plot, particulars of which will be narrated in the following chapter. The political parties took advantage of the situation to push their pretensions, one of them demanding the destruction of secret societies and the expulsion of Poinsett. In that party were affiliated Barragan and Santa Anna.

Esteva, after resigning the portfolio of the treasury in March 1827, was despatched as comisario general de hacienda to Vera Cruz, but the legislature of that state, composed chiefly of escoceses, refused to recognize him. Shortly before, on the 25th of June, Colonel Rincon had put the troops under arms, a proceeding which the escoceses severely condemned, and