FOREIGN INTERVENTION.
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ness manifested by the two contending parties, and on the circumstance that neither Spain nor the United States had assented to exercise a sole intervention. They pretended that it was a humanitarian mission they were about to perform.[1] Nothing came out of the mediation, because Juarez adhered to his answer given in the spring of the year to proposals of the British foreign office.[2] But the political troubles that disturbed the United States in the latter end of 1860, and preceded her gigantic sectional war, augmented the agitation of the European courts on Mexican affairs. Toward the end of November arrived Dubois de Saligny, the new French minister, whose instructions were to recognize Miramon's government.[3]
- ↑ In the latter part of 1860 there were five Spanish war ships opposite Vera Cruz, that had gone to back the demand for the return of the Spanish bark Concepcion, condemned as a good prize by the admiralty court at Vera Cruz, as also a demand for the suspension of the decree to stop payment of the money stipulated to be paid under the international conventions, which decree had been issued because the government had not the means to meet the obligations. These Spanish vessels might have used force, and thus the reactionary party would have again proudly lifted its head; but there were also seven or eight U. S. men-of-war moving along the coast, that might have taken a part in the performances.
- ↑ Matthews, the British representative, left Mexico after he lost all hope of bringing about an arrangement between the belligerents. Juarez pleaded that the constitutional government could accede to nothing whatever not grounded on the constitution of 1857, from which he derived his authority, and whereby he exercised the executive functions. Córtes, Diario Congreso, i. ap. 5, no. 4, 24-40. Degollado essayed a plan of his own, supposed to have been influenced by the British minister, Matthews, which he formed at Lagos and entitled Plan de Pacificacion, to bring about a compromise with those who were dissatisfied with the constitution of 1857. He proposed that a congress should within three months decree a constitution, on the basis of the reform laws; that the diplomatic corps together with delegates of the two rival parties should name a president, who was to be neither Miramon nor Juarez. The plan was sent to Gonzalez Ortega, then besieging Guadalajara, who, like all other chief officers before whom he laid it, rejected it with indignation. It was almost inconceivable that a man who had been such a steadfast champion of the legal government should have, at the very time when its triumph was almost certain, turned round to modify its principles and set up another standard. Juarez deplored as well as became indignant at such a stultification, and at once, Oct. 17th, removed Degollado from the command which he held only nominally, for Ortega had been for some time the virtual commander-in-chief of the forces in the north. Archivo Mex., Col. Ley., iv. 377-80; Juarez, Biog. del Ciud., 31-2; Baz, Vida de Juarez, 185-7; Dublan and Lozano, Leg. Mex., viii. 754-5, 762; Córtes, Diario Congreso, i. ap. 5, no. 4, 33-7; Arrangoiz, Méj., ii. 380.
- ↑ It was rumored that he was a man of liberal opinions, and it was held to be certain that he would act in accord with the U. S., having had confer-
