Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/649

Rh at one stroke centralizing the administration. The financial system quickly conformed, yet the blow was mitigated by withholding a while the decree changing the states into actual departments, with some additions to their number. Even municipal bodies were abolished, save in leading towns, and subjected more than ever to rules from governors and to other restrictions, arid finally to appointment by the central authorities, which thus took from the people every semblance of political government, and intruded them selves also in other directions, inquiring, for instance, with suspicious zeal, into the conduct of school children, and requiring lawyers to qualify at the capital.

Everything was subordinated to the direction of the dictator, who indicated his will, and executed it through officials, from councillors, generals, and governors to prefects, sub-prefects, and clerks, selected mainly with regard to their loyalty to their patron, and partly from policy. Although ability and fitness were secondary considerations, they cannot be said to have been lacking; for adherents, as well as the men to be courted, belonged as a rule to the cultivated and ruling classes. The council of state included individuals who had nearly all achieved distinction in ecclesiastic, legislative, and gubernatorial branches.