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102 the sea-girt nopal. Conservative organs kept before the people these and other benefits, and wherever French sway prevailed, the new order of things found ready acceptance, and acts of adhesion to the empire flowed in freely. Not that all this was spontaneous.

The provisional government did not fail to preserve the originals of such acts. Thus we find that J. M. Arroyo, under-secretary for foreign affairs, on the 7th of August requested his colleague of the home department to furnish him, for the use of the regency, all documents bearing on the subject, duly indexed. Those records showed that from June 12th to August 7th — that is to say, nineteen months after the landing of the allied commissioners, sixteen months after Lorencez occupied Orizaba, in open violation of the preliminaries agreed upon at Soledad, and nearly three months after Forey himself entered Puebla — there were just forty-five acts of adhesion to the empire, among which, if we except the capital, only five towns were really important ones, and that the number of inhabitants who subscribed to the proposed change were 154,592. Not even these had been spontaneous acts. The important towns alluded to were Córdoba, Vera Cruz, Orizaba, Puebla, and Toluca : the three first named had been under the control of the French arms from the first days of the military operations; the fourth, having been taken by assault, had to submit to the will of the conqueror; and the fifth, situated only sixteen leagues from Mexico, had ever