The frame of mind revealed in this document, which is unquestionably genuine, serves to refute the imputation of forgery so generally ascribed to Hidalgo’s manifesto of May 18th, addressed “A Todo el Mundo” and published in order to quiet the population. Its effusiveness and extravagance of repentance, and the earnestness of its exhortations to his followers to submit, have not unnaturally created suspicion, from their violent contrast to the deep convictions and reckless energy with which he precipitated and sustained the insurrection, but it can be accepted as authentic without impugning his good faith. He was impulsive and enthusiastic and was liable to the revulsions incident to his temperament. His cause had been disowned by God; he had been captured as a fugitive within a few months after he had been at the head of eighty thousand men. The grave was yawning for him, as the portal to the hereafter, in which there was, in his belief, no escape from eternal torment for one who died as a rebel to the Church. He was a fervent Catholic, whose excommunication cut him off from the sacraments essential to salvation, unless he could prove himself worthy of them by earnest repentance and by the amendment which could only be manifested through zeal in undoing that which had brought upon him the anathema. That under such pressure he should seek to avert the endless doom by heart-felt contrition was natural, however strange it may seem to those brought up in a different faith, who can sympathize with his aspirations for liberty but cannot realize the emotions enkindled by his religious convictions. * * * * *