Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/486

 480, 1857, General Zuloaga, commanding a brigade in the army, "pronounced" in favor of the Church and against the Constitution. He was aided by Comonfort, who, on the 11th of January, 1858, was denounced and abandoned by the very party he had so materially aided, and driven from the country. He later repented of his treason, and returned from Europe during the French invasion, taking arms with the defenders of liberty, and was assassinated by the hirelings of the Church. Zuloaga, in January, proclaimed the "Plan of Tacubaya." The leading principles of this "plan" were in direct opposition to those of the Constitution—to those of Reform. Had the people of Mexico sanctioned them they would have lost all they had gained by fifty years of fighting. The dark cloud of the previous century would again have settled down upon their nation. The fueros were to be restored—"under which the military and clergy are responsible only to their own tribunals,—the Roman Catholic was to be the only religion tolerated, and immigrants admitted only from Catholic countries; the press was to be subjected to censorship; an "irresponsible central dictatorship, subservient solely to the church," was to be established, looking, if possible, to a restoration of a monarchy. Mark these principles! for they give the key to events during the subsequent foreign intervention.

By the flight of Comonfort the presidency devolved upon the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,. After trying in vain to combat the hydra-headed enemy to freedom, represented by Zuloaga, Miramon and others in command of the army, Juarez and the loyal members of his cabinet hastened to Guanajuato, where they organized the government on the basis of the Constitution of 1857.