Decreto Nom. 172.

Single sheet (8 x 5 6/8 inches) printed on recto only, annotated and signed by local officials. Decree number 172, passing a law to help prevent the almost daily escape of criminals, by declaring that the Alcades may put delinquents in irons, manacles and their feet in stocks until the prisons are properly secured. Issued by Governor Jose Maria de Letona, former insurgent, and and Santiago del Valle (father of the Mexican novelist and historian Artemio del Valle Arizpe and later governor of the state during the Porfiriato). The Spanish provinces of Coahuila and Texas were governed as a unit intermittently during the late 17th- and early 18th-centuries until about 1726 when the two provinces were separated. In 1785 Saltillo and Parras with their surrounding territory were detached from Nuevo Viscaya and added to Coahuila. Under the Mexican Constitution of 1824 the provinces of Coahuila and Texas were rejoined with the capital at Saltillo. On august 15, 1824 the Congreso Constituyente of the new state convened to draft a constitution which was adopted on March 11, 1827. By May 21, 1835 that Congreso had adopted 325 decrees covering a great variety of subjects including the ordinances of the various towns of the state, amendments to existing laws, and some repeals of prior laws" (McKnight, pages iv and v); Kimball pages 178-179; not in Streeter.…