MEXICO.—After the usual experience of viceregal misrule, common to all the Spanish transmarine dependencies, this noble province threw off the yoke and asserted its independence in 1820, and virtually achieved it about a year afterwards, principally through Iturbide, a Spanish soldier of great valour and military skill, and who might probably have done for the land of his adoption what Washington had effected for the United States. Unlike that great character, however, he abused for his own selfishness the power he acquired; and, not content with being head of the state as regent on behalf of the people, he perfidiously caused himself to be proclaimed emperor, in 1822, and imperial revenues and honours to be decreed to himself and to his family. These measures, with many others of a like kind, produced such general defection, that he assembled the dispersed members of Congress in the capital, in 1823, and abdicated, agreeing to reside for the remainder of his life in Italy, on which condition a large allowance was made him. But, faithless to his word in this instance, as before, he returned from Leghorn, through England, attempted a revolution, miserably failed in raising any followers, and was ignominiously shot, at Padilla, in Santander, by La Garza, commander of that province, pursuant to instructions from the provincial legislature, in 1824. Vittoria, one of the ablest lieutenants of Iturbide in the war of independence, had been proclaimed president the year before; and the year after (’25) a treaty of commerce was ratified with Great Britain. Such proceedings, with the recognition that was soon to follow of the independence of the revolted country, had formed a topic of urgent interest at the Congress of Verona, in 1822, when, seeing what was looming in the future of South America, the Duke of Wellington, plenipotentiary from England, instructed by Mr. Canning, in continuation of the policy of Lord Castlereagh, to whom the Duke had just succeeded, presented a note, stating, that ‘The connection subsisting between the subjects of his Britannic Majesty and the other parts of the globe has for long rendered it necessary for him to recognise the existence, _de facto_, of governments formed in different places, so far as was necessary to conclude treaties with them. The relaxation of the authority of Spain in her colonies of South America has given rise to a host of pirates and adventurers,—an insupportable evil, which it is impossible for England to extirpate without the aid of the local authorities occupying the adjacent coasts and harbours; and the necessity of this coöperation cannot but lead to the recognition, _de facto_, of a number of governments of their own creation.’