CHAPTER XII. CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS.

right of trial, or jurisdiction for military misdemeanors, before the council of war of general officers. There were, besides these, three special fueros of war;—one of artillery, one of engineers, and another of the active militia. The ecclesiastical fuero, gave an appeal from the bishop to the metropolitan, or from the archbishop to the nearest prelate;—if the metropolitan commenced a cause, an appeal lay to the bishop who was his nearest neighbor; and, on a third trial, to another neighboring episcopate. Notwithstanding these military and ecclesiastical fueros were permitted to exist by special favoritism after the republic was formed, the Mexicans suppressed, after 1824, the fueros of the consulados and of the mineria, or the mercantile and mining tribunals, both of which were sanctioned by experience or convenience, and whose foundations had been laid in the best principles of jurisprudence. To compensate, however, for the destruction of such useful institutions, it was determined that, in the federal districts and territories, suits growing out of mercantile transactions should be decided, in