their prerogatives. At length, with little comprehension of the nature
of the materials out of which citizens were thus to be manufactured, and
with quite as little realization of the fact that the paternal methods
of education adopted by the padres were calculated, not to train their
neophytes to self-government, but to keep them in a state of perpetual
tutelage, the Spanish Cortes decreed that all missions which had then
been in existence ten years should at once be turned over to bishops,
and the Indians attached to them made subject to civil authority. Though
promulgated in 1813, this decree was not published in California till
1820, and even then was practically a dead letter. Two years later,
California became a province of the Mexican Empire, and in due course
the new government turned its attention to the missions, in 1833
ordering their complete secularization. The atrocious mishandling by
both Spain and Mexico of the funds by which they had been kept up, and
the large demands made later upon them for provisions and money, had by
this time made serious inroads upon their resources; notwithstanding
which they had faithfully persisted in their work. The new law now dealt
them a crushing blow. Ten years of great confusion followed, and then an
effort was made to save them from the complete ruin by which they were
threatened by a proclamation ordering that the more important of them,
twelve in number, should be restored to the padres. Nothing came of
this, however; the collapse continued; and in 1846, the sale of the
mission buildings was decreed by the Departmental Assembly. When in the
August of that year, the American flag was unfurled at Monterey,
everything connected with the missions - their lands, their priests,
their neophytes, their management - was in a state of seemingly hopeless
chaos. Finally General Kearney issued a declaration to the effect that
"the missions and their property should remain under the charge of the
Catholic priests . . . until the titles to the lands should be decided
by proper authority." But of whatever temporary service this measure may