The republicans, who were gaining ground because evidently no other Mexican could stand where Itúrbide had fallen, and the Iturbidistas, who desired to create anarchy in order to force the recall of their hero, clamored for new elections. Five provinces demanded them formally; and at length, despised by every one, Congress, the firstfruit of popular government, fell to the ground. Almost every institution that should have enjoyed respect was now discredited--even the Church, for it had crowned the emperor and shed its benedictions liberally on Congress. The army, however, stood, for it had shown its power both to elevate and to overthrow.[2.3] The next Congress, which met November 7, 1823, had a more democratic basis; but the members were personally inferior, intrigue and self-seeking again prevailed, and the young orators--convinced that winning applause from the galleries was the true object of speaking--launched forth on all occasions with that fatal fluency which their intoxicating idiom encouraged. After centuries of enforced silence, men to whom liberty could only mean license were called upon to decide the gravest questions of statesmanship. Naturally they were eager to build before laying foundations; and naturally, too, where nine tenths of the people could not read, it seemed like genuine statesmanship to flourish the novel vocabulary of independence.[2.3] Frivolous, fickle, now torpid and now running amuck, Congress found itself compelled eventually to frame a constitution. Under Spanish rule the provinces, each governed by an intendant, had known little and cared less about one another; and now, stimulated by the centrifugal tendency of the Iberian character and the dread of a tyrant, inflamed by transcendental doctrines of liberty, disgusted with the proceedings of the national authorities, and captivated by the thought of offices for all, they began to claim sovereignty; and something had to be done at once. A republic, though alien to all the habits and feelings of the nation, seemed evidently necessary, because no possible monarch existed, and because no other system could make it the interest of a sufficient number of persons to maintain the government; but this did not end the difficulties. The centralized type of republic was ardently desired by the oligarchy as likely to prove controllable, and by all the monarchists as a sloping path toward their goal; but the friends of Itúrbide and the enemies of privilege--strongest at a distance from the capital--fought against it, and at length, as the federal system, about which only the vaguest notions were entertained, promised more offices and seemed more likely to hold the country together, it was decided upon.[2.3]