Publisher's Synopsis
The revolution of August 4, as already has been suggested, was a complex and inconsistent affair, combining most heterogeneous elements: the popular institutions of 1824 and the autocratic power of the soldier upheld with bayonets; the army and the people, whose relations had always been, and in Mexico always had to be, those of wolf and lamb; the regular troops and the National Guards, who loved each other as fire loves water; General Salas reluctantly taking orders from Citizen Farías, and both of them doing obeisance to Liberator Santa Anna, whom both distrusted; and all coöperating to revive a federal constitution, which had been found in practice unworkable, and needed, in the opinion of everybody, to be redrawn.
