who believed that the Church should be independent of secular law.
But the trust of Juarez was in the people. Six-sevenths of them were at his back. What if some of them did not yet see in him their appointed deliverer? He was none the less responsible for their salvation. His keen eye had from the outset detected the weak spot in the constitution of the republic; it was in open conflict with that fundamental principle of liberty that all men are equal before the law. Until the army and the clergy were shorn of those special privileges which enabled them to bid defiance to constitutional authority the republic would be a failure. What Mexico needed was "a government of the people for the people by the people." This thought was embodied in the famous law for the administration of justice now known by the name of its Indian author—"the law of Juarez." The key-note of progress was struck on the passage of this bill by the Mexican Congress in 1857, and millions of the long-enslaved people of Mexico joined in the shout of joy with which it was received. This law awoke the bitterest opposition from those classes whose privileges it attacked.
Juarez was now dismissed from the cabinet as a dangerously popular man, to serve his State again as governor. But his enemies and his timid friends thus gave him an opportunity to put his theories into practice. He immediately set to work to educate his fellow-citizens up to the true idea of liberty. He built up the common schools, encouraged the Institute and urged upon the people the principle, untried before, of direct suffrage in the election of their governor. The grateful people of Oaxaca exercised their new privilege by electing
