CHAPTER XII.
CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS.
Since the downfall of Iturbide the body politic of Mexico has passed through many stages of revolutionary and factious disease. Four constitutions have been formed and adopted by the people or their temporary rulers independently of the Bases de Tacubaya, under which Santa Anna ruled despotically until the month of June, 1843. These are the Federal Constitution of 1824; the Bases y Leyes Constitutionales, or, Central Constitution of 1836; the Bases Organicas de la Republica Mejicana of 1843, and the restored Federal Constitution, with amendments by an acta de reformas, in 1847. Five great organic changes, in twenty-six years, have thus continually swayed the people between Federation and Centralism; and we may hope that, after all these vital alterations, besides all the minor military pronunciamientos or gritos, which, in the intervals have vexed the public tranquillity, the country has, at length settled down firmly upon the reliable basis of a great but balanced confederacy.
The Constitution of 1847 creates a Federal Republic; and, with the exception of the intolerant articles in regard to religion upon which we have commented in the preceding chapter, it is a document worthy of freemen who desire to avoid consolidation and are anxious to preserve the distinct, responsible activity of their states. This instrument, after indicating the subdivision of the whole territory into the states heretofore enumerated in Chapter 1st, deposes the national legislative power in a Congress formed of a house of representatives and a senate, the representatives being chosen every two years by the citizens of the states, in the ratio of one for every fifty thousand souls or for any fraction beyond twenty-five
