Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/634

614 Michoacan and Colima are comparatively free from the pest.

The persistency of race distinction or color rank has naturally tended to intensify the class lines, so widely fostered by inherited Spanish pride and aboriginal conservatism; and this so far as to create no little distress among a shabby-genteel set, whose fair complexion makes them still regard as degrading any labor which is supposed to belong to colored people. During the war for independence, royalty made an appeal to the besetting weakness by granting titles to men worth winning, and by creating the special American order of Isabel la Católica. Iturbide did the same by creating the imperial order of Guadalupe for civil and military services. It fell with the empire, but was revived for a time by Santa Anna, and finally by Maximilian.

Titles of nobility which had received a new lease under Agustin I. were abolished by decree of May 1826, yet the republic maintained the taste for distinctions by granting high-sounding appellations to officials and corporations, Santa Anna during his last dictatorship assuming that of Most Serene Highness. Crosses, coats of arms, and titles like benemérito de la patria were also bestowed both by general and state governments, and permission could readily be obtained for receiving them from foreign governments.'

Maximilian showed himself most generous in the distribution of honors, in the shape of medals, orders, and patents of nobility. He moreover created the imperial order of the eagle, making it superior to that of the revived Guadalupe, and the order of San