Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/74

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CHAPTER III.

ECHEANDÍA AND HERRERA — FINANCE — THE SOLIS REVOLT.
1826-1830.

{{hi|HARD-TIMES ITEMS — AID FROM MEXICO — THE REVENUES — COMISARIO AND HABILITADOS — SECRET INVESTIGATION — SUSPENSION AND RESIGNATION — ESTRADA, VALLEJO, AND JIMENO CASARIN AS ADMINISTRATORS — REVOLT OF 1828 — REVOLT OF 1829 — CAUSES — MONTEREY TAKEN — JOAQUIN SOLIS — PLAN OF NOVEMBER 15TH — ARGÜELLO DECLINES the COMMAND — SOLIS MARCHES SOUTH — ECHEANDIA'S PREPARATIONS — REVOLT AT SANTA BARBARA — BLOODLESS BATTLES OF Dos PUEBLOS AND CIENEGUITA — RETREAT OF SOLIS — RETAKING OF THE CAPITAL — ÁVILA CAPTURES SOLIS — TRIAL — THE SPANISH FLAG — BANISHMENT OF HERRERA AND TWENTY CONSPIRATORS — FINANCIAL AFFAIRS IN 1829-30.

IT is not my purpose to present financial statistics in this chapter. Only fragments survive to be presented anywhere, and these will receive such slight attention as they require, in connection with local presidio annals, commercial topics, and general remarks on the subject of ways and means for the whole decade. Here I have to speak of the management, or mismanagement, of the territorial revenues, of the insufficiency of those revenues, as administered, to pay the soldiers or other employees of the government, and of the resulting destitution, discontent, and finally revolt.

There is little or nothing that is new to the reader to be said of the prevalent destitution in these years, a destitution which oppressed only the troops.[1] The


  1. Complaints are not very numerous in the archives, since the uselessness of writing on the subject had been learned by long experience. The following minor items on this topic are perhaps worth preservation: 1826, Echeandía's complaints about the suspension of officers' pay. Only those officers who