Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/789

Rh the difficulties in the way, there was not activity enough in conveyances of ecclesiastical property to meet the expectations of the liberals at Vera Cruz. It was evident that speculators preferred to postpone to a more suitable time operations in that line. As to the reactionary government, it increased the poverty of its treasury by the suppression of a number of established taxes without providing means to replace the sums thus lost. It also decreed, on the 16th of July, many financial measures that were entirely in applicable under the existing circumstances. The idea contemplated at Mexico of levying thirty million dollars was an absurd one; the departments could not bear such a tax, as the property holders and merchants were ruined, and the other classes in the utmost indigence. The ayuntamientos petitioned for the suspension of the so-called ley de hacienda, which helped to bring on the reaction a further loss of prestige.

The reactionary press made the most of the laws enacted at Vera Cruz, asserting that religious unity was on the point of destruction, and that the people were about to be forcibly deprived of their catholic worship; insisting, to give still greater warmth to the question, that the asking by the liberals of aid from the United States was treason. But what kept the reactionists in considerable alarm was the lack of activity they began to notice in Miramon, who appeared to have devoted himself entirely to conjugal felicity.