espot, and then the Mexican patriots, under Iturbide, practically
dominated their country. The new Spanish Hibernian Viceroy, O'Dontroju,
could but bend his head to the storm, and in September, 1821, signed a
treaty with the insurgents by which Mexico was acknowledged to be an
independent constitutional monarchy under the Spanish king, Ferdinand
VII.

Such a solution of a great national uprising could only be temporary.
The Spanish Government refused to ratify the agreement arrived at for
Mexico's independence, and a barrack pronouncement acclaimed Agustin
Iturbide Emperor of Mexico in June, 1822. The empire of Iturbide lasted
less than a year, for the man was unworthy, and Mexican patriots had
not fought and bled for ten years against one despotism for the purpose
of handing themselves over to another. Iturbide was deposed and exiled,
and on his return for the purpose of raising his standard afresh in
Mexico, in 1824 the ex-Emperor was shot as an enemy to the peace and
tranquillity of his country.

The Republic of Mexico obtained the cordial support of England and the
United States, and when in 1825 the last Spanish man-at-arms retired
from the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, off Vera Cruz, all
Spanish-Americans on the two continents were free to work out their own
destiny. As was the case with the other Republics, inexperience in the
science of government and attempts to force the pace of progress,
condemned Mexico to fifty years of turbulence and alternating despotism
and license. Ambitious soldiers strove with each other for the place of
highest honour and profit. Texas, resenting the instability of Creole
government, separated from the Mexican States after a devastating war.

Amongst the higher classes of Mexicans the monarchical tradition which
had prompted the experiment of Iturbide's evanescent empire had not
entirely died out, and in 1840 a leading Mexican statesman, Estrada,
argued in an open letter that the republican form of government having
failed to secure peace to the country, it would be advisable to
establish a Mexican monarchy with a member of one of the old ruling
houses of Europe at its head. But the stormy petrel of Mexican
politics, General Saint Anna, pervaded the scene yet for many years
more; and in 1847 engaged in a disastrous war with the United States on
the subject of the Texan boundary, in which California was lost to
Mexico. In the meanwhile the suggestion that a monarchical experiment
s