Guerrero perished by the sword, as he had risen by it. The Vice-President, Bustamente, revolted, and was aided by Santa Ana. His popularity was too great to allow him to be spared, and when he was captured, Guerrero was shot, in 1831. Of the many infamous acts of which Santa Ana has been guilty, the murder of Guerrero is the worst. Possibly it would have ruined him, but for his services against the Spaniards, at about the same time. He was now the chief man in Mexico, and became President in 1833. The next year he dissolved Congress, and established a military government. The Constitution of 1824 was formally abolished in 1835, and a Central Constitution was proclaimed the next year, by which the States were converted into Departments. Santa Ana kept as much aloof from these proceedings as he could, and sought to add to his popularity by attacking Texas, where he reaped a plentiful crop of cypress. The triumph of the Centralists was the turning-point in the fortunes of Mexico, as it furnished a plausible pretext for American interference in her affairs, the end of which is rapidly approaching. The Texan revolt had no other justification than that which it derived from the overthrow of the Federal Constitution; but that was ample, and, had it not been for the introduction of slavery into Texas, the judgment of the civilized world would have been entirely in favor of the Texans. In 1844, when our Presidential election was made to turn upon the question of the annexation of Texas to the United States, the grand argument of the annexationists was drawn from the circumstance that the Mexicans had abrogated the Federal Constitution, thereby releasing the Texans from their obligations to Mexico. This was an argument to which Americans, and especially democrats, those sworn foes of consolidation, were prone to lend a favorable ear; and it is certain that it had much weight in promoting the election of Mr. Polk. Had the Texan revolt been one of ambition merely, and not justifiable on political grounds apart from the Slavery question, the decision might have been different, if, indeed, the question had ever been introduced into the politics of this country. The sagacious men who managed the affairs of the Democratic party knew their business too well to attempt the extension of slave-holding territory in the gross and palpable form that is common in these shameless days. But Texas, as an injured party that had valiantly sustained its constitutional rights, was a very different thing from a province that had revolted against Mexico because forbidden by Mexican authority to allow the existence of slavery within its borders. There was much deception in the business, but there was sufficient truth and justice in the argument used to deceive honest men who do not trouble themselves to look beyond the surface of things. For more than twenty years our political controversies have all been colored by the triumph