to dine on board, and this manifestation of hospitality was accepted in good faith. When they had dined the Genoese signified to Guerrero that he was a prisoner, and set sail with him to the port of Huatulco and delivered him into the hands of his enemies. This great and good man, valiant and worthy of the respect and gratitude of the nation . . . was shot in the pueblo of Cuilapa, on the 15th of February, 1831."
It was not till 1848, for the first time, that the Presidency was transferred without violence, and under the law. The incumbent was General Herrera, and he was succeeded peaceably by General Arista. These two administrations "will forever place themselves before historians, both Mexican and foreign," says the history "as models of honor, economy, and order." But Arista was deposed in two years, and in the next three months there were four Presidents, the last of them Santa Anna, on one of his periodic returns.
Thus the turmoil of revolutions has continued down to recent times. A certain Don Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada directed a letter to the authorities in 1840, proposing, as a measure of relief, that a monarchical government should be established in Mexico; and the idea, in the distracting state of things we have seen, cannot be considered wholly without reason. It caused great scandal nevertheless, but Gutierrez Estrada stuck to it tenaciously, and, by a very singular coincidence, he was one of those who, twenty-four years after, went to Miramar to present the imperial crown to the Archduke Maximilian.
If I cite a number of such events from the past it is not for the purpose of being disagreeable or arguing that the same state of things is to last. It is partly because they are amusing, and partly to obtain a more
