Before the establishment of commercial banks in Mexico in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the aspiring merchant or impecunious landowner had few sources from which he could borrow capital. Funds were available within the country but the rich preferred speculation in government bonds and securities to investment in agricultural or industrial enterprises. Financial deals in which enormous interest rates were paid by the government to private individuals became almost a matter of public scandal and were widely condemned by politicians of all parties. The only institution to operate an extensive lending policy was the Roman Catholic Church which, through the offices of its Juzgado de Capellanías, continued after independence its practice of lending money to any person able to provide adequate security for a loan. Although the contractual terms demanded were by no means onerous to the borrower, nevertheless there was much criticism of these fiscal activities by the clergy. The liberals in particular attacked the Church’s control of the land which was a direct consequence of its lending operations. The Church’s defense against these attacks was based firstly on its rights under both civil and canon law, and secondly, on the benefits which the nation’s economy received from the widespread clerical investments. Furthermore, the clergy insisted that they were genuinely interested in utilizing their wealth for the advantage of the people and country as a whole. Hence their funds were invested by way of loans in every kind of industrial and agrarian venture.

The Stewarts of Scotland came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and descended from Alan Falhald of Oswestry. Walter, First Lord High Steward of Scotland, was the son of Alan. Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll, who was killed at the battle of Falkirk in 1298, was the son of Lord Alexander Oswestry, Fourth Lord High Steward. Sir John’s brother, Lord James Oswestry, became the Fifth Lord High Steward, and from him descended the House of Stuart, rulers of Scotland and England. William Stewart of Paraguay descended from Sir John of Bonkyll, the twenty-second generation after Alan Falhald. In Scotland the Stewarts were landlords, merchants, bankers and farmers whose fortunes waxed and waned but always seemed to recover. That they were a resourceful clan is a conclusion easily reached if one takes the career of Dr. William Stewart of Paraguay as an example.

In the summer of 1870, Napoleon III desperately withdrew his troops from the stronghold where they had been staving off Italian patriots from the greatest prize of the drive for unification, the city of Rome. Bismarck’s armies were sweeping west, a thrust which would end in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. This Franco-Prussian War also emptied the Roman Catholic bishops out of St. Peter’s Basilica where they had been meeting since the previous December at the First Vatican Council.

The parents of most of the Council fathers were born in the decades before the French Revolution. The sons grew up during the Age of Metternich when the firemen of Europe, the Concert Powers, tried to stamp out the embers of the Revolution. Many of these men had just been ordained, a few already wore episcopal mitres when most of Europe exploded in 1848. As they assumed leadership in the Church, Garibaldi and Cavour were evicting Pope Pius IX from most of the Papal States.

The chronicle of United States relations with the Mexican Republic has been one marked by professed sympathy, misunderstanding, and undisguised hostility. All three descriptions may be applied to the earliest official and extralegal contacts between the peoples of these neighboring countries. Such turmoil has understandably léd to diverse interpretations by not a few historians in the United States, and probably the most confused period in this chronicle was that of 1810 to 1814 when the accredited United States Agent William Shaler became involved in a government sponsored project aimed at influencing the struggle for Mexican independence.