CHAPTER XXIV.
MEXICO UNDER A REORGANIZED SYSTEM.
1769-1790.
Separate Government for the Provincias Internas — Intendencias of Provinces — Changes Effected and Final Establishment — Viceroy and Archbishop Alonso Nuñez de Haro — His High Character and Previous Record — Extraordinary Honors Conferred on Him by the Crown — His Death and Burial — Calamitous Visitations — Epidemics and Earthquakes — Their Effect on the Ignorant — Viceroy Manuel Antonio Florez — His Previous Career — War against the Apaches — English and Russians Watched in the Pacific — General Policy of This Ruler — Resignation, and Cause of It — Special Favor Shown Him by the Crown — His Departure for Spain — Obsequies of and Mourning for Cárlos III. — Grand Proclamation of Cárlos IV. — Honors to Royal Personages.
The expediency of reorganizing the government of New Spain was one of the primary questions that engaged the attention of the visitador general, José de Galvez, during his sojourn in the country. In accord with Viceroy de Croix, who ruled for the king at the time, he formed and laid before the crown a plan for its better administration, which was approved and ordered to be carried out. That plan provided among other things for the creation of a government, comandancia general, and superintendencia de hacienda, entirely independent of the viceroyalty of New Spain, in the provincias internas, so called, including Nueva Vizcaya, Sonora, Sinaloa, and the Californias, together with Coahuila, Texas, and New Mexico; the new governor to have also the patronato real, a prerogative that will be fully treated of in another part of this volume. Though clothed likewise with judicial pow-
