"The crisis is terrible" wrote the minister of relations two days later, and well he might. All the fierceness and intrigues of partisan politics, all the cunning of high and low finance, all the subtleties of priestcraft and all the terrors of a haughty Church came into play.[1] Freely we have received, but we will not give, and anathema to him who takes, was in effect the dictum of the prelates. For a time it looked as if no official would venture, at the peril of excommunication, to promulgate the law; but Farías and Juárez found a man, and he was appointed governor of the Federal District, in which lay the capital, for that purpose. Then came protests from the "venerable" clergy, complaints from state governments, mutinies of troops, and civilian insurrections organized by priests. Cries of "Viva la religión! Death to the government!" resounded in the streets of the capital. Ministers of state were hard to find, and they soon went out of office. Minor officials resigned so rapidly they could hardly be counted. Santa Anna, after hailing the law as the salvation of the country, turned against it. Moderados in Congress, encouraged by the outcry, hurled epithets harder than stones at the Puros.[2]
On the other hand some of the Deputies, the regular troops at the capital, who expected to profit by the law, the comandante general of Mexico, the National Guards and the democratic masses rallied to the support of the government; and Farías, his long head erect, and his face, always thoughtful and sad, now anxious but set, appealed to the patriotism of the nation, made the most of his authority as chief of the state, and held to his course with inflexible energy and courage. Not only was he determined to have the law respected, but he demanded that it should be made effective. Chaos was the result. "When we look for a ray of hope," said El Republicano, "we discover nothing but alarms, anxieties and every probability of social dissolution." "Furious anarchy," was Haro's description of the scene. There must soon be a crash, he added; "the Devil is running away with us."[3]
Peaceful interests were not, however, entirely forgotten amid this turbulence. During the second week of January Moses Y. Beach, proprietor and editor of the New York Sun, arrived at Vera Cruz from Havana. He carried a British passport. Besides his wife Mrs. Storms, a remarkably clever
