There were two parties, around which rallied opposing elements,—the Conservative, Central, or Servile, as it was variously called, and the Federal, Liberal, or Democratic. To the former belonged the leading families, who possessed certain monopolies and feared to lose them; the clergy, who with these few families held themselves for an aristocracy; and a few of the lower classes, who from personal or religious feelings were satisfied with the existing order of things: and all these bitterly resisted any innovation, especially any attack upon the privileges of the Church. To the Liberals flocked all those who did not enjoy monopolies, and who could not be worse off under any change; but there came to this standard also men of intellect, who saw the dangers which threatened their country, and who rejected the superstition into which the local Church had fallen, but who in their eagerness to hold up the example of the United States of the North to their newly emancipated countrymen, forgot the radical difference between the Anglo-Saxon and Spanish stock and training. Then came in the feeling of race-prejudice; and when one remembers that three quarters of the population was Indian, and that of the other quarter was composed the entire ruling class, it will perhaps be a matter of surprise that more evil did not come from this threatening condition of affairs. If the Indios of Guatemala had not been the most peaceable and law-abiding of their kind known to history, they might have improved the opportunity to repay all the miseries inflicted upon their ancestors. As it happened, they could at least be conscious of their power. With no fixed policy, the ancient States of the kingdom of Guatemala cut adrift from Spain. At one time all, except San Salvador, entertained the idea of union with the new Empire of Mexico under Iturbide, but they escaped that complication by the early collapse of the Mexican throne; and at last, on the 1st of April, 1823, representatives of the States met in the City of Guatemala, and the Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, after long debates and many propositions, in which, as might be supposed, the Church party had no unimportant influence, a Federal Constitution was proclaimed on Nov. 24, 1824.