No. 292.
Mr. Nelson
to Mr. Fish.
Mexico, May 1, 1873. (Received May 14.)
Sir: During the past month the campaign against the insurgents of Tepic has been vigorously and successfully prosecuted. The principal officers formerly subordinate to Lozada have not only laid down their arms to the government, but have taken part against their recent leader. The latter, after the occupation of Tepic, retired with but two or three thousand followers to the almost inaccessible fastnesses of the Sierra de Alica, where he expected to be able to resist all attacks until some new combination with revolutionary elements elsewhere might enable him to resume the offensive and regain his former unlimited ascendency over the Indians of that region. But the government forces under General Ceballos frustrated this calculation, penetrating to his mountain retreat, and driving him successively with great loss from his best positions. This insurrection, which at one time threatened serious consequences for the republic, is now reduced to a few hundred desperadoes, whose only object is to assure their personal safety.
Public opinion has been much excited for two or three months about the arrival of some scores of European Jesuits, who, in consequence of late legislation against them in Germany and Italy, have established themselves in Mexico, where some of them have devoted themselves to public instructions and others have dispersed through several States as missionaries. A portion of the press has violently denounced them, calling upon the government to expel them from the republic as “pernicious foreigners,” by virtue of a long-standing law giving discretionary faculties for that purpose to the executive. The government has manifested that it will take no action against the Jesuits as long as they do not render it necessary by systematic disregard of the laws, and this decision is approved by the majority of the press. Although a proposition has been presented to Congress for their expulsion, seconded by several legislatures, it is not probable that any action will be taken at present, and their permanence in the republic will depend upon the prudence of their conduct.
Congress has been chiefly occupied with the annual discussion of the appropriation bills. The bill presented by the committee on ways and means having cut down the government estimate by several millions, the debate has been energetic, with probabilities in favor of the government. Certain constitutional reforms, proposed years ago by President Juarez, have also received desultory discussion without much chance of their being definitely disposed of during the present session. A new tariff has been proposed by a committee of financiers appointed for that purpose by the President.
[Page 669]A subsidy of $5,000 per kilometer lias been voted to a proposed railway of forty kilometers in length, to connect the Vera Cruz railway with the celebrated mining district of Pachuca.
The late President Benito Juarez has been declared by Congress “Benemerito,” or well-deserving of his country in a heroic degree, and his name is to be inscribed in golden letters in the hall of Congress. The anniversaries of his birth and his death are to be appropriately celebrated, and in this connection, the same honor has been decreed to the “Father of his Country,” the priest Hidalgo, who inaugurated the war of independence in 1810. The executive is directed to spend $50,000 in the erection of a national monument to Juarez; his children are granted pensions of $3,000 each, and a premium of $2,000 is to be paid for the best biography of Juarez presented within six months.
I have, &c.,