Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/441

Rh On the 22d of March, General Diaz crossed the Rio Grande with General Gonzalez and forty followers. This number was quickly increased to four hundred, and approaching Matamoros on the 31st, he published at Palo Blanco, a few leagues to the south of that city, the plan of Tuxtepec in a reformed shape.

The preamble of the plan, almost a verbatim copy of that proclaimed at Tuxtepec, set forth that the Mexican republic was being ruled by a government that had created a political system subversive of the laws and institutions of the nation; that the right of suffrage had been reduced to a farce, as the elections were entirely controlled by the president and his adherents; that the sovereignty of the states had been repeatedly infringed by the deposal of governors and the appointment of creatures of Lerdo as rulers, especially in the cases of Coahuila, Oajaca, Yucatan, Nuevo Leon, and Jalisco, to weaken which last state, Lerdo had segregated and made a military canton of Tepic; that he had squandered the public funds in personal amusements; that the courts of justice had been made subservient to him; that municipal author. ity was destroyed, as the members of ayuntamientos were simply dependents of the government; that the stamp act was an extortion; that the commercial and agricultural interests of the nation were sacrificed by the concessions granted to the English railway company and the scandalous convenio de las tarifas; that by the monopoly of that line, the establishment of other railroads was prevented; that Lerdo had agreed to recognize the debt to English bond-holders for the consideration of $2,000,000, and that he contemplated making an arrangement with the United States for the assumption of that debt by the latter, which was equivalent to selling the country to the neighboring republic; and that, owing to his acquirement of extraordinary faculties and the suspension of the guaranties of personal rights, a remedy of these abuses could only be sought by an appeal to arms. The