LETTER XIII. 
COURT CEREMONIES. GENERAL SANTA ANNA. DIPLOMATIC DINNER. 
For some time after the installation of General Santa Anna as Pro- 
visional President of Mexico, under the system known in the political 
history of that country as the " Plan of Tacubaya,"* a difficulty existed 
between the Government, and Ministers of foreign nations, as to the eti- 
quette which was to be observed on public occasions when it became neces- 
sary for them to meet ceremoniously. To such an extent had this variance 
of established rules been carried, that upon the consecration of the present 
Archbishop, the Envoy from France deemed it proper to mark his disap- 
probation, by retiring with his legation from the Cathedral. 
These matters, which to us republicans seemed of no very great mo- 
ment except as they had been rendered so by the Mexicans themselves, 
were, however, at length satisfactorily arranged ; and on the first of Jan- 
uary, 1842, the members of the different missions were invited to meet 
the President in the morning, for the purpose of exchanging the usual 
courtesies of the day, and to partake of a dinner in the evening. This 
invitation was sent with all due form through his Excellency, Mr. De ' 
Bocanegra, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. As the system of entertain- 
ment at table is quite a novelty in Mexican diplomacy, the invitation was 
entirely unexpected ; and it was hailed by the whole corps as indicative of 
an agreeable change in our future intercourse. 
Accordingly at noon on the first of January, the diplomatic body, in 
full uniform, met at the apartments of the Minister of Foreign Relations 
in the Palace. Here again, some trifling question of etiquette was started 
relative to the precedence of the Archbishop, which being arranged, the 
corps, as soon as it had been joined by the Ministers of State, was ush- 
ered to the hall of audience by an aid-de-camp of the President. Passing 
* The revolution of 1841, after several fniitless battles, in which victory seems to have crowned neither side, 
and several as fruitless interviews of tlie Chiefs and messengers of the different parlies, was at length terminated 
by a meeting of commanding officers at Tacubaya on the 28th of September, when a plan was agreed upon aud 
signed by 191 persons, by means of which the existing Constitution of Mexico was superseded. By this system, 
or " Plan of Tacdbaya," consisting of 13 articles, a general amnesty was proclaimed— a call of a new Con- 
gress to form a Constitution agreed upon— and a Junta created, to be named by the General in Chief of the 
Army. The Junta was to elect the Provisional President, who, by the 7th article, was clothed " with all the 
powers necessary to reorganize the nation and all the branches of administration ;" or, in other words, with 
supreme power. That General was Santa Anna. He selected the Junta, and the Junta returned the compli- 
ment by selecting him ! 
