COMMITTEES.

COMMITTEE ON LIBRARY AND CABINET

Dr. Lawrence F. Flick, Chairman.

The Rev. F. P. Siegfried.

Dr. E. J. Nolan.

Mr. John J. Ferreck.

Mr. Edward J. Du Mée.

COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL RESEARCH.

The Rev. Jos. J. Murphy, D.D., Chairman. The Rev. E. J. Curran.

The Rev. Peter Guilday, S.T.D.

The Right Rev. Mgr. P. R. McDevitt.

The Rev. S. P. Dever, D.D.

The Rev. F. J. Hertkorn.

The Rev. Edward M. Gallagher.

The Rev. Jos. A. Whitaker.

Mr. P. A. Kinsley.

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE.

Mr. Joseph M. Engel, Chairman.

Mr. Jeremiah J. Sullivan, Jr.

Mr. John F. Skelly.

COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION.

Mr. Edward J. Galbally, Chairman.

Mr. James P. Considine.

Mr. Joseph P. Gaffney.

COMMITTEE ON HALL.

Mrs. W. J. Doyle, Chairman.

Miss Katherine Brégy.

Mrs. John J. McKenna.

Miss Katherine G. Love.

DON AGUSTIN DE ITURBIDE

BY AUGUSTIN DE ITURBIDE

Concluded

Iturbide made his triumphal entry into the city of Mexico on the 27th of September, 1821-his thirty-eighth birthday. Spanish domination had lasted three centuries, year for year. Describing this entrance of the army of the Three Guarantees into the capital of the empire, Alamán tells of how the throngs received that army, and especially the First Chief, with the liveliest acclamations; adding that this had been the only day of pure enthusiasm and joy, without admixture of sad memories, or the announcement of new misfortunes, that the Mexican people had known in his day. He wrote that in 18511 and the same could be repeated to-day.

2

Iturbide announced the consummation of their independence to his fellow countrymen in a short proclamation that Alamán qualifies as "worthy of that occasion"; in the course of it he said, addressing the Mexicans, "You know now the way to be free; it is for you to show the way to be happy".

On the following day, the First Chief convened the provisional Supreme Governing Board, to which he appointed thirty-eight of the most distinguished men in the country, representative of all the parties, and made demission to them of the supreme power that he had exercised during the seven months that had elapsed since the proclamation of the Plan of Iguala.

1 Alamán, Historia de México, Vol. V, p. 257.

2 Ibid., p. 258.

The first act of the Board was to decree the Act (declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire, the second paragraph of which document is as follows:

"The heroic efforts of her (Mexico's) sons have been crowned, and there has been consummated the eternally memorable enterprise that a genius, superior to all admiration and eulogy, the love and glory of his country, began at Iguala, prosecuted, and carried to its end, overcoming almost unsurmountable obstacles."

Iturbide had been elected president of the Sovereign Board; as, however, that body named the regency for which the plan of Iguala provided, as soon as they had issued the declaration of independence, Iturbide, having been named president of the regency, ceased to preside over the board. The latter then issued several decrees in recognition of Iturbide's services: they created for him the rank of Generalissimo Admiral of the forces of land and sea, with the appellation of Serene Highness; this rank which was to cease at the Liberator's death, carried with it a salary of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year, to begin from the day of the proclamation of the plan of Iguala; and they decreed to him a capital of one million of dollars, and a tract of land, twenty leagues square. To Don José Joaquín they decreed the honors and the salary of a regent, which should be changed for those of a counsellor of state, upon the arrival of the emperor.

It may as well be said that Iturbide never took the capital or the lands that were decreed to him; and as he resigned that part of his salary, corresponding to the seven months of the war of independence, the regency published that fact "in order that the people might better know the patriotism and the virtues of their Liberator ", this being the first time that he was officially named Liberator-a title that, many years after his death, was confirmed by law.

1 Alamán, Historia de México, Vol. V, p. 263.

During the month of September, the peninsula of Yucatán, the province of Chiapas, and then, all Guatemala, which comprised the whole of Central America, proclaimed the plan of Iguala and their annexation to the Mexican Empire; and these accessions having been ratified by the government at Mexico, Iturbide sent a column of 5,000 men in support of them, which proved to be necessary only for the establishment of order. On the other hand, the Spanish commandant of Vera Cruz, towards the latter end of October, abandoned that city, and Colonel Santa Anna, whom Iturbide had appointed commandant general of the province of Vera Cruz, entered the town, taking possession of it in accordance with its free proclamation of the plan of Iguala.

There, then, was a free nation, having apparently every element of future prosperity; free, not only as a nation, but in its individuals, for the plan of Iguala also abolished slavery and the distinctions between the races that had been created by the Laws of the Indies; and all found their interests and their aspirations satisfied in that production of the highest statesmanship, the plan which the Liberator had offered at Iguala, and each provision of which had been accepted without the suggestion of an emendation by "the altar, the toga, and the sword"; while it healed the wounds that had been opened by a Vandalic revolution that had lasted six years, and brought into union, under its third guarantee, the poor and the rich, the great and the small, who had been launched into that war against each other.1 The empire also possessed a vast territory, the wealth of which had been proverbial for three hundred years; while its society had been brought to the highest degree of civilization to which it could be carried by the Spanish realm.

1 Seward, Lincoln's Secretary, in a conversation with the father of the writer of these notes, expressed his opinion that the plan of Iguala was second, only to the constitution of the United States, among the political documents of the New World.

And this nation, so favored, possessed that other element of united action, and consequent prosperity, that is essential to every people in its first establishment as an independent society; that is, a Hero: a hero whom all loved, whom they claimed to be "superior to all admiration and eulogy whom each Mexican soldier worshiped, and for whom he would gladly rush to a heroic death. But that hero stood in the way of an enemy that was not known then as now, before which the Liberator was destined to fall, as every other Catholic champion since his day has fallen; that is to say, Free Masonry.

The Spanish constitution of 1812, never obeyed in Mexico, abolished 1814, and as suggested above, re-established in 1820, was a Masonic concoction, directed against royalty and the Catholic Church. Now the first effect of Iturbide's pronouncement at Iguala was the final abolishment of that constitution, in so far as Mexico was concerned, and the promise of a future one, to be formulated according to the needs of the Catholic nation. Accordingly, the Liberator felt the first assault of Free Masonry, during the early days of the campaign of independence, in the desertion of Lieutenant-Colonel Almela, whose lodge at Mexico ordered him, under the severest penalties, even that of death, to withdraw from Iturbide's army; which he therefore did, with the two hundred men whom he commanded.1 But the campaign of Iguala was soon transformed into too sweeping a victory, for the lodges to successfully attempt further measures against Iturbide, before his entry into the city of Mexico. They continued their conspiracy, however, in their traditional secrecy, and its effective work was shown from the day after the occupation of the capital by the army of the Three Guarantees.

The parties into which the country was divided at that

1 Alamán, Historia de México, Vol. V, p. 114.