little more than two months from its most solemn promulgation suspended by an act of executive volition; and yet they continued administering the oath to obey it to all authorities and corporations that had not been sworn.[1]
The constitution, both by its promulgation and subsequent suspension, gave a great impulse to the revolution in affording legal pretexts for its support. At first the insurgent sheets said that the only bonds existing between the American and Spanish people lay in the sovereignty recognized in the kings. But as the constitution had now changed the foundations of Spanish society, placing the possessions of Spanish America on an equal footing with the mother country, the former had acquired rights that demanded respect, and if they were violated, they had a right to dissolve the connection. At the suspension of the constitution it was claimed that the people of Mexico should resort to arms, because the laws on which depended the pacification of the country had been wantonly set aside by the government; they alleged that those laws, if they did not end the revolution everywhere, could certainly have brought calm and peace to the greater portion of the country. Such were the remarks of the Correo del Sur, nos 20 and 31. Morelos wrote Rayon on the 15th of January, 1813, that they now had the evidence of Spanish rascality. The Spanish authorities had called for elections to lay a heavy hand afterward on the electors; they had granted liberty of the press to imprison the writers.[2] The córtes had really armed the revolutionists with a double-edged sword. The whole matter went before the supreme government in Spain, and was taken into consideration by the regency and council of state, by
- ↑ Venegas continued exercising more powers than he had before the publication of the fundamental law. Notwithstanding the marked infringement of it, he still published the decree of the córtes, to the effect that 'infracciones de la constitucion se vieran de preferencia por los tribunals correspondientes.' Rivera, Hist. Jalapa, i. 409.
- ↑ He ended in his usual way with a Latin quotation, 'quid adhue desiderare possumus.' Alaman, Hist. Méj., iii. 297-8.
