Iturbide was allowed to choose his own escort to the coast, and selected General Bravo for the purpose, by whom he was accompanied to Antigua, (near Veracruz), where a ship was freighted by the Government to convey him to Leghorn. He embarked on the 11th of May, 1823. A new Executive was immediately appointed by the Congress, which was composed of Generals Victoria, Bravo, and Negrete, by whom the affairs of the country were conducted, until a new Congress was assembled, (in August, 1823), which, in October 1824, definitively sanctioned the present Federal Constitution.
Many persons have attributed Iturbide's conduct, during the latter part of his career, to pusillanimity; but this is a charge which is repelled by the whole tenor of his earlier life. I am myself inclined to ascribe it partly, to a wish not to occasion a Civil war, and partly, to a lurking hope that a little time would prove as fatal to the popularity of his rivals, as it had been to his own; and that the eyes of his countrymen would then be directed towards himself, as the only means of preserving them from anarchy. Such, at least, appears to have been the impression with which he returned to Mexico in 1824, when he was outlawed by the Congress, and shot, upon landing on the coast, by General Garza; a measure, the severity of which, after the services which Iturbide had rendered to the country, can only be excused by the impossibility of avoiding, in any other way,
