The monarch had good reason to be dissatisfied with the leading personages in this outbreak, with the viceroy for being so exacting and unyielding, and with the prelate for his excess of zeal, when, as one who professed to set an example in humility, he should have contented himself with a protest and appeal to the sovereign, especially in view of the insignificance of the point involved and the well known temper of the marquis. The ecclesiastics, on whom the crown above all relied for supporting its authority, since troops were not kept, had been the chief promoters of the riot, wherein they proved themselves possessed of a power greater than that of the state. This influence had been strengthened by the triumphant return of the archbishop, and extended not alone over Indians and mestizos, but over the creoles. The Ávila-Cortés conspiracy, a half century before, had been an outburst on the part of landed proprietors, with little hold on the people; here on the other hand came in action a wide-spread feeling rooted among the very sinews of the colonists and directed against the more favored children of Spain, those of Iberian birth who had come across the sea to fill the best and largest number of offices, with the intention merely of enriching themselves in New Spain and then turning their back upon the country. It is not strange that those born on the soil, and bound to it by every tie, should look with disfavor on these interlopers who not only encroached on their rights and possessions, but treated them with contempt.[1] The revelation of this antipathy, which
- ↑ The importance of the Gelves outbreak, and the wide-spread interest affected thereby, called forth a mass of documents and accounts as we have already seen. Among the most valuable are those given in Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, série ii. tom. ii.-iii., 27 in number, collected by the knight Echeverria y Veitia, and including orders, petitions, and representations from different sources, yet for the greater part in support of the archbishop, and most of the remainder in favor of the audiencia and cabildo. The only important paper on Gelves' side had already appeared in print. This partiality induced the historian José F. Ramirez to collect a complementary set of documents bearing on the other side. This exists in two 4to volumes of close manuscript under the title of Mexico y sus Disturbios, obtained by me
