ed. He is remembered now, and a superb statue of heroic size, "in form and gesture proudly eminent," stands in the walls of the Church of San Francisco, executed by two young brothers, awaiting its transfer into marble or bronze. It is most apt and fit that the moulded form of this earliest hero of emancipation and independence should be placed in the walls of a church which has also secured its independence from an oppressive and foreign faith.
The cause of independence lay sleeping, but not dead, for a dozen years, when the General, Iturbide, who had been chief in suppressing the revolt, headed it, and made it a speedy and almost bloodless triumph. But he succeeded because he recognized the supreme authority of the Church. His declaration of independence began after the Jeffersonian sort: "Mexico is and of a right ought to be free from the throne of Spain." His second declaration how different: "The Roman Catholic Church is the religion of the state, and no other shall be tolerated." Had that been in our Declaration, our path upward had been equally slow and bloody. It, however, secured him the alliance of the Church, and was a wise political measure, viewed in the exigencies of the moment; unwise, viewed in the light of the future.
So rigidly was this state of intolerance maintained, that in a treaty made with our Government ten or twelve years after, while we granted perfect liberty of worship to their citizens resident in our territory, Mexico granted such liberty to ours only in their own private residences, and then "provided that such worship was not injurious to interests of state." And that treaty, I am told, on high official authority, remains unmodified to this day; so that now, were Romanism in power, it could suppress even private worship in an American family, and there could be no redress under our treaty stipulations. So rigid was the grasp of the Church over the whole state.
The first ray that shot its solitary light across the dark was the bold act of Mr. Black in burying the poor shoe-maker, assassinated for not sufficiently respecting a kneeling Mexican's prejudices, in
