AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. i 7 



to conquer the country. The national forces, under the leadership of 

 undoubtedly the greatest and noblest character that Mexico has pro- 

 duced, Benito Juarez, reported to be of pure Indian parentage, offered 

 a not inglorious resistance ; and in at least one instance undoubtedly 

 inflicted a severe defeat upon the French army. But with the almost 

 universal defection of the clergy and the wealthier classes, and with 

 the country weakened by more than forty years of civil strife and an 

 impoverished exchequer, they were finally obliged to succumb ; and 

 after a period of military operations extending over about sixteen 

 months, or in June, 1863, the French entered the city of Mexico in 

 triumph and nominally took possession of the whole country. A 

 month later, a so-called " assemblage of notables," appointed by the 

 French general-in-chief, met at the capital, and with great unanimity 

 declared the will of the Mexican people to be the establishment of 

 an empire in the person of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, " or 

 such other prince as the Emperor Napoleon should designate " ; and 

 in pursuance of this act the crown was formally offered to Maximilian 

 at his palace in Austria in October, 1863, and definitely accepted by 

 him in April, 1864. Viewed in the light of subsequent events, the 

 point of greatest interest and importance in this scheme on the part of 

 Louis Napoleon for the conquest of Mexico and its conversion into a 

 French dependency, to the humiliation of whatever political organiza- 

 tions might be left after the war to represent the former Federal 

 Union, and to the utter discomfiture of the "Monroe doctrine" a 

 scheme which Napoleon designed should constitute the most brilliant 

 feature of his reign was the connection of the Church of Mexico and 

 its adherents with the movement. If not, indeed, as is often sus- 

 pected, the instigators of it in the first instance, they were undoubt- 

 edly in full sympathy with it from its inception and with good 

 reason. For as far back as 1857, Juarez, when a member of the Cabinet 

 of General Comonfort, had been instrumental in the adoption of a po- 

 litical Constitution which was based on the broadest republican prin- 

 ciples, and which provided for free schools, a free press, a complete 

 subjugation of the ecclesiastical to the civil authority, and universal 

 religious toleration a Constitution which, with some later amend- 

 ments, is still the organic law of Mexico. Such a reform could not, 

 and at the time did not, triumph over the privileged classes, the 

 Church, the aristocracy, and the military leaders, and, although em- 

 bodied in the form of law, remained in abeyance. 



But the Church and the aristocracy at the same time did not fail 

 to recognize that, if Juarez and his party ever attained political 

 ascendency, their property and privileges would be alike imperiled. 



The subversion of the so-called Republic of Mexico, with its un- 

 stable government and frequent revolutions, and its replacement with 

 an empire, backed by the then apparently invincible arms of France, 

 and with one of the Catholic princes of Europe on the throne, were, 



VOL. XXIX. 2 



