administrative action. The provisional government was accused of excessive severity, but the facts prove that no more was used than the preservation of the public peace called for, and that the government and congress made themselves respected without resorting to arbitrary penalties. Punishments inflicted were in almost every instance pronounced under process of law by the regularly established courts.
Having arrived at the end of the provisional administration, I will now consider the organization of the country into states and territories.
The constituent congress on the 8th of January, 1824, passed a law establishing constituent legislatures in the "provinces that had been declared states of the Mexican federation," and in which such legislatures did not yet exist. The states thus summoned to choose their own legislative bodies were Guanajuato, Mexico, Michoacan, Puebla de los Angeles, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, and Vera Cruz. The same law prescribed the mode of choosing the deputies, whose number was to be for each legislature no less than eleven, nor more than twenty-one, aside from the suplentes, who were to be respectively no less than four, nor more than seven.
Meanwhile the authorities then existing in each of the states were recognized, and were to continue in power till the legislatures should be installed, by which time the nation's acta constitutiva would be already promulgated. Under that acta the states of the federation were: Guanajauto; Interno de Occidente, composed of Sonora and Sinaloa; Interno de Oriente, formed of Coahuila, Nuėvo Leon, and Texas; Interno del Norte, which comprised Chihuahua, Durango, and New Mexico; Jalisco; Michoacan; Oajaca; Puebla de los Angeles; Querétaro; San Luis Potosí; Tabasco; Tamaulipas, formerly Nuevo Santander; Vera Cruz; Yucatan; and Zacatecas. The two Californias and the partido de Colima were temporarily
