Note V-107 — Chapter V · CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 1825-1830.

Under this decree some of the Spanish property was sold; but after a while, upon the receipt of favorable news from Mexico, and when there was a quasi certainty that Spain would not again make such attempts as that against Tampico, the law was revoked. But property already sold was declared to be legally disposed of, adding that the former owners should not be indemnified therefor till Spain had recognized Central American independence. The texts of both the federal and Guatemalan decrees may be seen in Montúfar, Reseña Hist., i. 182-7.

Memorias para la Historia de la Revolucion de Centro América. Por un Guatemalteco. Jalapa, 1832. 16mo, 257 pp. The authorship of these memoirs was attributed by well-informed men, namely, Morazan, ex-president of Central America, and the distinguished statesman and diplomate of that country, Lorenzo Montúfar, to Manuel Montúfar, who had been chief of staff of the first president of the republic, Manuel José Arce. The work begins with the geography and political and ecclesiastical divisions of the country, accompanied with data on each of the states and territories; namely, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Poyais, Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala, and Chiapas, together with some remarks on mining and other industries, military defences, and financial condition. The political portion, as the author himself acknowledges, is loosely put together, and lacks many necessary details, which he attributes to absence from home when the first sheets went to the press. He claims, however, to have impartially and correctly narrated the events of Cent. Am. history from 1820 to 1829. This to some extent is true; nevertheless there crops out in places class-bias, particularly in describing the events from 1826 to 1829, by the ideas which prevailed in the moderado, otherwise called servile, party, in which he was affiliated and serving, and for whose acts he, like many others, was driven into exile after the defeat of that party on the field of battle.

Manuel José Arce, Memoria de la Conducta Pública y Administrativa de ... durante el período de su presidencia. Mex., 1830. 8vo, p. 140 and 63. This work purports to be a defence of his administration by the first president of the republic of Central America, against what he calls the slanders heaped upon his name by those who rebelled against the government and the nation, with documents bearing on the revolts, the whole having been prepared while the author was in exile. The book is a disconnected, disjointed patchwork, incomplete in its various records of events, and indicates, as does Arce's career, a weak character. A number of meaningless and inapt quotations from the old classics and from law-books help to confuse the narrative still more.