Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/489

Rh being himself in power to-day, when his time to be shot would come. Although it was often apparently a lucky turn to a day's doings that sent one to the palace instead of to the gallows; and not infrequently there was a bloody settlement of accounts after a battle, yet it has evidently been the policy of the government not to drive the defeated to desperation, but by every means possible to restore confidence and maintain peace.

The government, installed by a momentarily victorious faction, found it often necessary to purchase its continuance by leniency and bribery of opponents, and it was generally powerless to undertake the reforms with which the people had been deluded, or too short-lived to carry out those that might be attempted. This weakness encouraged revolutions also by individuals for gain of office promotion and notoriety, or to cover defalcations; and so corporals sprang quickly by a series of bloodless outbreaks, or intimidations, to be generals and governors.

As in the early days of the United States republic, the first federal officials of Mexico were exceedingly simple in their habits and surroundings, trained as they had been midst hardships of field and camp, and mountain fastnesses. They were easy of approach, and prompt in the execution of their duties. During part of the French revolution, the newly made powers were likewise gracious. Says a visitor to Mexico in 1828: "I was introduced to the president, went through his dining-room, where was a table-cloth on the end of a coarse table with three plain covers on it, passed from that to his bed-chamber, which was very plainly furnished with a mattress laid on a bedstead without any curtains, and thence passed to his audience-chamber, as frugally furnished as the others." Such were the simple surroundings of the man who occupied the palace where the Aztec emperors once held sway; and after them the viceroys from Spain, in imitation of their royal master, clothed