s of Casa Fuerte, born in Lima, was
appointed, and during his _regime_ the first Mexican newspaper was
published. During the war between England and Spain the Viceroy
Figueroa, Marquis of Gracia Real, was almost captured by the British,
who gave chase to the ship in which he came from Spain. Further events
were the singular phenomenon of the forming of the volcano of Jorullo
in Michoacan in 1759, the celebration of peace between England and
Spain in 1763, the suppression of the Jesuits and their expulsion from
the country in 1767, under the Marquis de Croix; the continued
exactions of the Council of the Indies for treasure from the colonists,
the clearing of the Gulf of Mexico of buccaneers in 1785, the
reorganisation and improvement of the city of Mexico under Padilla,
Count of Revillagigedo (1789-94); the encouragement of agriculture,
mining, manufacturing, road-building, exploration, improvement of
sanitary conditions, and amelioration of those concerning the
administration of justice, which this good viceroy carried out. But at
the close of the century, under his effete successor, Branciforte
(1799), a conspiracy was inaugurated, but frustrated, for the massacre
of Spaniards, and the establishing of the independence of the country.

At the beginning of the great nineteenth century, the long array of
viceroys, governors, and priests nears its close. The imperial
authority of the Spanish sovereign, unquestioned since Cortes won the
country for it, reached its natural waning, urged on and influenced by
world-happenings in European lands reacting upon these remote shores of
New Spain. Not only was this the case in Mexico. The decrepitude of the
Mother Country, the old age and infirmity which had been creeping upon
Castile through the excesses of her rulers, who learnt nothing from
time or circumstance, was laid bare to the people of America throughout
the vast regions held by Spain. Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia,
Argentina--for the voice of Bolivar was ringing through the Andes--all
in the first and second decades of the progressive nineteenth century
were bent upon one stern task, the throwing off of the yoke of Spain
and the establishing of native administrations. The flower of the
earth, the vast and rich tropics and sub-tropics of North and South
America, from California, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains, Mexico,
Central America, down through the great Andes of Peru and Chile to Cape
Horn, was in the hands of Spain, a