official press. There were also pending questions with Great Britain and the United States which distracted the president's attention.
Serious disagreements having broken out between the constituent congress and Comonfort, fears were for a time entertained that the latter would disperse that body and assume the dictatorial powers conferred on him by the plan de Ayutla, ignoring the fact that the same plan gave congress authority to revise the acts of the government. To arrive at an understanding of this state of affairs, I must revert to the adoption by the president, with the sanction of his ministers, of the estatuto orgánico, which was published after the draught of a constitution had been framed, on the 15th of May.[1] That statute had a tendency to the centralization of the government, by extending the action of the executive over everything, not excepting even the municipalities, in exchange for the renunciation he voluntarily made of the full powers the revolution had vested in him. It did, however, confine his authority within legal bounds, and for this reason might be termed a constitution, embracing as it did many of the clauses to be discussed by the constituent congress. Some governors and deputies showed their disapproval in formal protests, doubtless because the former were deprived of the unlimited powers they had been exercising; the fact that the law terminated the existing anarchy went for nothing in the estimation of these protestants. This was likewise the cause of dissension between the executive and congress, imbittered by the former claiming a direct participation in the proceedings of the latter, with the avowed purpose of tempering the action of the deputies, who, carried away by the excitement under which they had been elected, deemed it their duty to set up a government diametrically opposed in There were also pending questions with
- ↑ Under the ninth section of this instrument, the governors of states and jefes politicos of territories were to be appointed by the president; it set forth their powers and duties, making of them real dictators. Archivo Mex., Col. Ley., ii. 110-49.
