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326 debatinG the report to elevate the lawS of reform to the StatuS of ConStitutional preCeptS Citizen Prieto: Sir, I am certainly surprised to see that the discussion has gone awry and that it is desired to determine, with respect to this article and the committee’s addition, whether this matter is special or if it is a regulatory law. As some references to history are made and other circumstances brought forward that demonstrate the zeal of some representatives in favor of the interests of the states, all this makes me call the attention of the chamber to the fact that this is not one of those ordinary pieces of business; this is not a piece of business with which one can deal by means of special circumstances and in accordance with constitutional laws, but rather by means of how it came about historically and so that Congress understands what the nation desires. The historical conditions are as follows: With the Constitution proclaimed in the year 1857, including within it the declaration of the political rights of the nation, a problem of the highest importance lurked in the shadows ; the issues denominated Reform remained, as though asleep under the burden of the administration that found itself then facing the destinies of the country, going down a road of transitions.The leader of the power himself, intimidated before the great work that presented itself to him, went along a path of difficulties and dangers whose only results were half-concessions, words of double meaning, social errors that since then had to be accounted for to the nation after having cost torrents of blood. The Constitution of 1857 has very serious flaws because it was 3 On the Laws of Reform. Report on the Speech before Congress on April 28, 1873 Original title: “Al debatirse el dictamen para elevar al rasgo de preceptos constitucionales las Leyes de Reforma” [pronunciado en el Sexto Congreso Constitucional, durante la sesión del 28 de abril de 1873]. Source: Diario de los debates. Sexto Congreso Constitucional , vol. 2 (Mexico: Imprenta F. Díaz de León y Santiago White, 1872). on the lawS of reform : 327 simultaneously an exhortation of the rule, the doctrine, and the axiom; it was the consecration of the historical antecedent; it was the consecration of the innermost conviction of the representatives of the people. For that reason there is much ill-defined, much generalization in the way the constitutional articles were drawn up, very few precepts that have the character of absolute imperative as a code should contain. The country progressing thus, much had been won, but the political revolution was scarcely completed. The national party had a symbol; there was not yet room for the sad lament that the liberal party had no symbol and that we were progressing without a compass amidst shadows and fanaticism, nor that we found ourselves without direction in the difficult consideration of the fate of the country in relation to its future fortunes. This symbolic program had been achieved. In the Constitution of 1857 the political matter was to a large degree dealt with, but as for the clerical matter, attention was riveted on this mistake, on this unfortunate mistake of immense importance. The wealth of the nation was the property of certain individuals, but only those individuals could enjoy their own property.These concessions to individuals, in moments when the famous gentleman Don Miguel Lerdo was at the head of the ministry, made the Reform die, so to speak. They made it stumble, it remained in impossible contradiction and produced all the irregularities that some call the inconsistencies of the Revolution of 1857. The social needs were others. The social needs required the proclamation of a gospel for humanity in which civil marriage might be instituted, in which the ecclesiastical bodies had no wealth, in a word, the heightening of civil power, the elevation of human dignity, so that the immense horizon of progress might open before the eyes of the patria. This was the Reform, and this Reform, by the nature of things, was proclaimed on the fields of battle at the sound of an arsenal, a gun carriage serving many times as a rostrum. And it was in fact proclaimed by the will of the nation; it was a law as great as the Constitution, as venerated as it, as dogmatic as it, and as much considered the will of the nation as it. Establishing a parallel between the two, so...

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