Nevertheless, ambitious local politicians constantly intrigued against Santander, who in his turn was suspected of encouraging federalist agitation in the hope of overthrowing Bolivar. The United States and England recognised the independence of Colombia shortly after the expulsion of the Spaniards, but foreign troubles arose when the new republic faced the question of paying the immense debt contracted by Bolivar's agents in recruiting and equipping the mercenary troops and buying ships, artillery, and ammunition. This debt had been enormously swollen by the dishonesty of some Colombian commissioners and by the greed of money lenders who insisted on receiving bonds for double the amount they had really advanced. The temptation to borrow more when it was refunded was too great to be resisted, and Colombia soon saw herself burdened with foreign obligations amounting to nearly seven millions sterling. All the revenues were insufficient to pay interest on this sum--a truly stupendous one for so poor a country. The payments fell into arrears, and though the debt has been scaled down repeatedly, interest has rarely been paid. At the very beginning of her independent existence Colombia's credit was ruined, and the three countries into which she was shortly divided have remained burdened to this day with the debts then contracted, their finances disorganised, their attempted operations blighted by the reputation of bankruptcy, and their diplomatic relations hampered by the clamours of bondholders.
Santander's administration was further embarrassed by Bolivar's demands for money and troops with which to pursue his conquests in Peru and Bolivia, and still graver difficulties soon arose. Paez, left in command of the army in Venezuela, became involved in disputes with the authorities of the Venezuelan cities and with the ministers at Bogota, all of whom he despised as mere civilians or as foreigners who had no right to interfere.
Finally, in 1826 the central government formally deprived him of his position and summoned him to Bogota, but a revolution which promptly broke out in Caracas made him dictator. The news brought Bolivar back from Lima, where for two years he had reigned an absolute monarch, leading the life of a voluptuous eastern prince. For the next four years the Liberator struggled in vain to repress the rising tide of federalism and radicalism in Venezuela and New Granada. The republican theorists could not forget that he had re-established the convents, placed the schools under priestly control, abrogated government contracts for personal reasons, introduced aristocratic decorations, and schemed for a hereditary senate and a life tenure of the executive; nor that his influence had stopped the Cucuta convention in the path of political reform, prevented the abolition of slavery and capital punishment, and retained the connection of Church and State, and the exemption of the army and clergy from civil jurisdiction. Santander was more liberal and a better practical politician. He had shown much ability during the Liberator's absence, and risen to be the head of a considerable party.
Bolivar succeeded in temporarily crushing some of the opposition in Venezuela and in cajoling Paez, and on his return to Bogota he made a feint of resigning the presidency. Congress, however, was still under his spell and re-elected him. He then made an attempt to secure legal sanction for his system by summoning another constitutent convention.
But news had come of Peru's and Bolivia's defection, and the agitation of the transcendental liberals, the universal desire for local self-government, and the ambitions of a hundred intriguers for high office, proved too much for him. A majority of the convention which met at Ocana in 1828 were partisans of Santander and opposed Bolivar's proposals although the Liberator at the head of three thousand soldiers watched the proceedings. Though he did his best to intimidate the majority, he shrank from frankly playing the role of a Cromwell, and contented himself with ordering his supporters to withdraw, leaving the convention without a quorum. It dissolved and the country trembled on the verge of disintegration. His friends called an assembly which obediently proclaimed him dictator. The Liberator accepted, and deprived Santander of the vice-presidency. The press was muzzled, protesters banished, and military rule established. Some fiery young republicans, determined to emulate the example of Brutus, struck down the palace guards at midnight and rushed into the house to kill the dictator. But his mistress, Manoela Saenz, awakened by the noise, directed him to a window. He dropped a few feet to the pavement and ran and hid himself under a bridge, while the woman, in her night clothes, met the assassins on the stairs and told them they could enter only over her dead body.
They pushed her aside with their bloody hands only to find the quarry escaped. The next day Bolivar returned to the palace and his spies soon hunted down the criminals. Santander, suspected of knowledge of the plot, went into banishment, and for the moment civil war was averted.
[Illustration: SCENE IN THE ANDES, EN ROUTE TO BOGOTa.]
But the incident did not revive Bolivar's waning popularity. News came in 1829 that Paez had again assumed the dictatorship of Venezuela. This was fatal to Bolivar's hopes. With New Granada in a ferment behind him he could not expect to conquer Paez and the formidable llaneros. He made a half-hearted attempt to raise an army, but recoiled before the insuperable difficulties. Again he resigned the presidency, protesting that he was ready to sacrifice all personal ambition to secure the integrity of the Colombian union and the establishment of a strong and ordered government. Again he was re-elected, but meanwhile civil war was raging in Ecuador, where his own troops disavowed his authority.
Rebellion also broke out in Pasto, and Peru intervened in Ecuador and sent a fleet to capture Guayaquil and an army to invade Cuenca. Bolivar exhausted his last resources in despatching troops to meet the Peruvian onslaught, but the principal result of the war was to put General Flores in a position to make himself independent dictator of Ecuador.
Despairing of longer maintaining himself, but loath to give up his ever-cherished idea of union, the Liberator entered into negotiations with European diplomats to appoint a prince of a reigning family as king of Colombia. But the idea was impracticable. There was no place for a monarch, either native born or foreign, on the Granadan highlands, and Venezuela had already virtually separated. Although a rebellion in Antioquia headed by his old companion in arms, General Cordoba, failed in the fall of 1829, at the end of the year word came that Venezuela had formally declared her independence and had pronounced a sentence of perpetual banishment against the Liberator. This was the last straw, and Bolivar made no further resistance to his fate, but summoned a congress and retired to his country house penniless, sick, and heartbroken. All his vast estates had been sacrificed to the cause of independence; the hardships of his innumerable marches over the cold mountain roads had broken his health; and his mode of life during the intervals of peace had not tended to restore it. Although only forty-seven he was a dying man. Still he clung to his hopes of vindication and re-election, but seeing that even the bulk of his own friends opposed, he at last sent in a formal resignation. He lived only a few months after congress had elected Mosquera president.
Though Bolivar's overthrow was a triumph for the federalists and red republicans, congress shrank from going too far and installed a wealthy aristocrat as president. However, his feeble administration was soon driven from power by the revolt of General Urdaneta, who made use of Bolivar's name as a rallying cry, but who in fact was actuated alone by personal ambition. The federalists and anti-Bolivarists did not leave him long in possession, and in May, 1831, he was expelled in his turn.
Obando and Lopez, both bitter enemies of the Liberator during his lifetime, and the latter suspected of complicity in the cowardly murder of the great Marshal Sucre, came to the head of affairs. New Granada's intestine troubles made her too weak to attempt the coercion of Venezuela and Ecuador, so their independence was recognised and the Colombian republic ceased to exist.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL--PANAMA.]
A federalist Constitution for New Granada was framed in 1832, and shortly afterwards Santander became the first legal president.
Unquestionably the strongest man in the nation, a good administrator and a shrewd politician, he was helpless to check the tendency toward disintegration, though he reduced Bolivar's army of twenty thousand to less than one half, and did much to establish civil administration.
His energy in enforcing order earned him the title of the "Man of Laws,"
and many Granadans regard him as the real founder of their nationality.
Marquez, who succeeded to the presidency in 1837, was not radical enough to suit the advanced federalists and republicans, although the first serious rebellion which broke out against him was caused by his suppression of convents in reactionary and Catholic Pasto. At the same time Obando was intriguing against the government, and many of the provincial governors aided the plots. When summoned to trial, Obando fled to the wilds of Popayan and Pasto, and civil war raged through 1839 and 1840. In this latter year Panama successfully revolted, maintaining its independence until 1842. Tomas Mosquera, the minister of war, with the help of his son-in-law, General Herran, eventually triumphed over the rebels. In 1841 the latter became president, and set vigorously to work to strengthen the power of the central government.
By this time, all the people who took any interest in politics had divided into two parties. The liberals insisted on universal suffrage, the separation of Church and State, the granting the provinces the fullest autonomy, the division of the greater portion of the national revenue among the provincial governments, and even opposed the theoretical right of any government to impose its will on the individual citizen. The conservatives believed in respecting the clergy, in continuing the old system of education under priestly control, and resisted any further emasculation of the national government. Herran recalled the Jesuits, and under his direction a conservative convention framed a more centralising Constitution than that of 1832. Bolivar's ashes were delivered to the Venezuelan government with impressive solemnities, and his memory apotheosised as the father of the nation and the apostle of centralisation. Herran was succeeded by his father-in-law, Tomas Mosquera. During his administration, which lasted until 1849, steam navigation was introduced on the Magdalena, the Panama railway was begun, the finances were brought into some sort of order, the army was further reduced, and the post-office system was improved.
[Illustration: CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN 1850.]
The liberals and federalists were constantly becoming more powerful and more discontented. Disturbances broke out from time to time and when Mosquera's term expired, the attempt to elect a successor in an orderly and constitutional manner utterly failed. Riots and bloodshed followed, and it was officially announced that no candidate had received a majority of the popular vote. The duty of making a choice fell upon congress, and Lopez, a general of the war of independence who had taken part in the overthrow of Bolivar, was installed. This meant a resumption of the march toward complete decentralisation, temporarily checked during Herran's and Mosquera's administrations. The Constitution was reformed so as to reduce the power of the national executive and guarantee greater privileges to the provinces. The latter were divided and subdivided to suit the exigencies of local politicians until their number reached thirty-five. Lopez had been a revolutionist himself and did not know when he might be one again, and his abolishment of the death penalty for political crimes met with the hearty approval of the large number of Granadan politicians who were in the same case. The central government transferred a large part of its revenues to the provinces, and gave up to them the control of judicial administration, of education, and of transportation. The tide of liberal legislation also swept over the privileges of the clergy. Laws were voted suppressing of tithes, giving the nomination of parish priests to the civil authorities, taking control of education out of their hands, separating Church and State, and establishing civil marriage. But it was easier to pass such laws than to enforce their observance by the Granadans. The clergy were enormously powerful among the common people and the conservative aristocrats. The banishment of the archbishop and several suffragans roused the conservatives. Politics became the principal preoccupation of the educated classes. Hardly a village in the country but had its political club, and more than a hundred party newspapers, besides innumerable pamphlets, thundered against their opponents. The conservative revolution broke out in 1851, beginning in Pasto and immediately spreading over the whole western half of the republic and even to the eastern plateau. Antioquia was the stronghold of the clericals, and there they gathered a force of a thousand men which was beaten at Rio Negro on the 10th of September, 1851, while the insurgent bands in a dozen other provinces were reduced in detail.
Although the liberal government was thus triumphant in the field, the danger had been too great and was still too menacing to make it safe to maintain an uncompromising attitude on the religious question.
Lopez procured the election of Obando, another political general of the same type and opinions as himself, as his successor in the presidency.
The new president's first act was to summon a convention which abolished the last traces of Herran's moderately centralising Constitution, and depriving the executive of the power of naming provincial governors.
Obando gave satisfaction to no one, and in 1854 General Melo, commander of the cavalry in Bogota, incited the garrison and workingmen of that city to join him in an insurrection. However, the chiefs of the conservative party would have none of him; the recent concessions to the clergy had removed the strongest motives for rousing fanaticism to arms; and the clericals declared in his favour in only a few provinces. The property-holding and educated classes were practically unanimous against him. Mosquera and Herran, the most powerful men in New Granada and the historical chiefs of the moderate conservatives, had modified their views to suit the exigencies of the situation and become in effect moderate liberals. It was Mosquera himself who led the provincial militia against Bogota and overcome the dictator after much bloody street fighting.
[Illustration: TYPES OF COLOMBIAN NATIVES.]
The unhappy country, tired of continual internecine disorder and exhausted by the harrying civil wars, rested willingly for two years under the compromise administration of Mallarino in which representatives of both parties and most of the principal factions had a voice. As a matter of fact the federal government had almost ceased to exercise the greatly reduced functions which nominally remained to it.
The executive had only the shadow of a control over the provinces, its revenues sank to well-nigh nothing, its army was reduced to eight hundred men. The very name of the country was changed from the "Republic of New Granada" to the "Granadine Confederation," and the organisation of powerful and independent federal departments was begun, foreshadowing the abolition of the old provincial system. In 1857 three candidates had presented themselves--Ospina, representing the clerical conservatives; Murillo, the advanced liberals; and Mosquera, the moderates. Suffrage had been made universal, and under the conditions necessarily prevailing among a population almost entirely illiterate and used for centuries to monarchical and military government, a satisfactory election was impossible. On the face of the returns Ospina received a plurality, but the radicals were able to force the adoption of a new federal Constitution in 1859 which abolished the old provinces. However, the new system had not the sympathy of the conservative and clerical president. He tried to usurp control of the elections, the liberals accused him of acting unconstitutionally, insurrections broke out in various parts of the country, and the confusion became worse confounded.
In the state of Bolivar, the liberal insurrectionists triumphed, while in Santander the conservatives themselves started a revolution which Ospina only succeeded in suppressing by the bloody battle of Oratorio.
Meanwhile Mosquera had become governor of Cauca, and when the conservatives of that state tried to expel him, he beat them and took advantage of his victory to declare himself independent of Ospina. The latter advanced, but Mosquera defeated him, and invaded the upper Magdalena, gaining the battle of Segovia. In every state there was an insurrection against Ospina, and three ex-presidents accompanied the insurgent armies. On the surface the civil war appeared to be a mere contest for personal power between Mosquera and Ospina, but the former had ensured a large support by raising the banner of federalism, and the latter's triumph would probably have meant a strengthening of the national government and certainly a reaction from the radicalism which had gained ground year by year since the fall of Bolivar. Supported by the clericals, conservatives, and reactionists, Ospina fought tenaciously and with a fair prospect of success. But the federalist armies advanced relentlessly from both north and south, and one after another the provinces of the eastern plateaux were wrested from him by bloody and well-contested battles. Bogota was finally taken and the president imprisoned, but Mosquera's opponents kept up the conflict for some time in the states of Panama, Santander, and Antioquia, and it was near the end of 1861 before the federalists were everywhere triumphant.
With Mosquera at the head of affairs, under the title of "Supreme Director," a congress was summoned whose members were called, not deputies, representatives, or delegates, but "plenipotentiaries" of the sovereign states. This congress adopted a new constitution, New Granada's sixth since 1830. The triumphant liberals expelled the Jesuits, abolished ecclesiastical entails, extinguished the monastic orders, confiscated Church property, decreed the absolute separation of Church and State, imprisoned the archbishop, and secularised the schools. Suffrage was made nominally universal, and the death penalty abolished. The name of the country was changed to the "United States of Colombia," and it became little more than a league of nine federal states for the purpose of defence against foreign attack. The national government was expressly prohibited from interfering in the affairs of the states, even for the preservation of order, and a clause of the Constitution provided that "when one sovereign state of the union shall be at war with another, or the citizens of any state shall be at war among themselves, the national government is obligated to preserve the strictest neutrality." The federal judiciary had no power to decide any constitutional questions nor could its decisions bind the state authorities. The national government was deprived of half its revenue for the benefit of the states, and the receipts of the latter equalled the federal income. This Constitution remained in force for twenty-two years, during which civil wars and factional disputes continually racked Colombia.
[Illustration: POST-OFFICE AT BOGOTa.]
Moreno, the clerical dictator of Ecuador, had aided Ospina during the civil war, and to punish him Mosquera undertook a campaign which resulted in a Colombian victory at Cuaspud on the 30th of December, 1863. However, he desisted from his announced intention of deposing Moreno and installing an anti-clerical government in Ecuador, and granted peace without the imposition of any onerous terms. Murillo was elected president in 1864 for the ensuing two years, to which short period the term had been reduced. The religious question would not down, and he found a conservative revolution going on in the state of Antioquia. It triumphed, and Murillo prudently recognised the successful insurgents as the legal government. He followed this same policy in regard to other revolutions in the states of Bolivar, Magdalena, and Panama, and cautiously refrained from all intervention, even when conservative insurrections occurred in the neighbourhood of Bogota itself, or when the clericals of Antioquia invaded Cauca, and defeated the liberals. One of the last acts of his administration was to impose on the impoverished federal treasury the settlement of all the forced loans and confiscations made during the three years of terrible civil war. Mosquera, who succeeded Murillo in 1866, was not content to remain a mere figurehead, although it was under his leadership that the federal system had been definitely established. He bought ships and artillery without authorisation from congress, and claimed the power of intervening by force whenever the legal government of a state was unable to maintain order. This attack on the right of revolution outraged the radical republicans. According to their theory and practice the federal government was merely an alliance between the peoples of the states, but Mosquera's doctrine would tend to make it an alliance between the state governments, creating a ruling oligarchy whose power might be continued indefinitely. Denounced as the assassin of Colombian liberty, he broke off relations with the liberal majority in congress, and in 1867 assumed dictatorial powers. But the Bogota garrison was suborned by his enemies, and its revolt was followed by his deposition and the substitution of Acosta.
The new president renewed Murillo's policy of non-intervention. Colombia had begun to reap a benefit from the increasing foreign demand for tropical products. Exports grew in value, and with them, imports and revenue. But expenditures grew faster; the poorer states demanded and received subsidies from the federal treasury; public buildings and local improvements were planned beyond the nation's ability to pay; and a swarm of employees and pensioners battened on the public revenues. Under the concession of 1850 the Panama railway had agreed to pay three per cent. of its net revenue to the government, and the receipts from this source amounted to fourteen thousand dollars a year. Colombia had stipulated for the right to purchase the road in 1870 for the ridiculously low price of five million dollars, but Acosta's administration had no money to invest and was greedy for ready cash. So the franchise was extended until 1966 for one million dollars down and an annual subsidy of a quarter of a million. In 1880, under the pressure of poverty, the installments until 1908 were alienated.
Under Gutierrez's administration (1868-69), when the governor of Cundinamarca gathered troops and assumed a dictatorship, the president deposed him. Even a liberal administration found it impracticable to carry out the theory of non-intervention. An attempt was now made to secure the nation's creditors by authorising the hypothecation of specific revenue--a measure which left the administration insufficient means to meet ordinary running expenses. Under Salgar (1870-72), the acknowledged deficits amounted to fifty per cent. of the total revenue.
The increasing revenues had proved a curse instead of a blessing, for the demands of the states and officials were insatiable, and the sums spent in subsidies and internal improvements grew beyond all reason.
Meantime the most extreme and unrestrained liberalism dominated the politics of the country. Congress passed a formal vote of condolence for the death of Lopez, Paraguay's unspeakable tyrant, who had just succumbed to Brazil and Argentina, after having devoted to destruction nine-tenths of his people. All honorary and useless military titles and employments were abolished, and the law on that subject contains the following curious provision: "In naming the eight generals spoken of by the Constitution, from whom must be chosen the commander-in-chief of the army, all Colombians over twenty-one shall be considered as generals of the republic."
Murillo was elected for a second term in 1872, and at once devoted himself, and with considerable success, to the re-organisation and regulation of the finances. The law of 1868, which had hypothecated the revenues to meet the charges of the public debt, was repealed and the foreign bonds were scaled down to less than one-third their face. By such measures the president succeeded in paying the government employees and taking care of pressing home necessities, and even showed a nominal surplus at the end of his term.
During the administration of Santiago Perez (1874-76) the first mutterings of the terrible storm of civil war soon to burst over the country were heard. The state of Panama defied his authority and imprisoned his officers, but he applied conscientiously the constitutional doctrine of non-intervention, and disavowed a general who on his own responsibility had deposed the governor. The governor of the state of Magdalena took possession of the custom houses at the mouth of the river, and the troops of the state of Bolivar attacked federal detachments passing along the Magdalena--a river which is inter-state, and whose navigation was free by the terms of the Constitution. The popular election of 1875 was so disturbed that congress assumed the power of selecting a president, and Parra was installed the following spring. An internecine conflict broke out in Cauca; the president started to intervene, and the states of Antioquia and Tolima declared war against him. Although guerilla bands in Cundinamarca, Boyaca, and Santander menaced the government's rear, twenty-five thousand recruits were raised and sent against the rebelling states. Antioquia was beaten at Chancos and Garrapata, and the rebels of central Colombia at La Donjuana, in battles where the largest numbers of soldiers ever gathered on Colombian soil were engaged.
[Illustration: RAFAEL NUnEZ, PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA IN 1879-1883, 1885-1891.]
Peace was followed by a general amnesty, because the victorious liberals dared not proceed to extremities against their adversaries.
Trujillo was installed as president without opposition, and the harried country recovered somewhat from the exertions and disasters of the terrible year of 1876. The finances were, however, in horrible disorder; expenses amounted to enormous figures; the deficits became greater than the total revenues; interest on the public debt, which had been regularly kept up since 1873, was indefinitely suspended. Disturbances soon began to break out again, and the national guard deposed the governors of Cauca and Magdalena. The president showed an inclination toward centralisation; he formed alliances with state governors, encouraged them to prolong their terms, and systematically fostered divisions in the liberal party. Trujillo was succeeded by Nunez, nominally a liberal, but who at heart had also sickened of the federalistic system and was looking for an opportunity to strengthen presidential prerogatives. The Constitution stood during his first term and those of his two successors, but when he was re-elected in 1884 the policy which he followed soon caused him to be denounced by the liberals as a traitor to the Constitution.
The failure of a liberal insurrection in 1885 was followed by a complete unitarian and clerical reaction. In 1886 a new Constitution was adopted which substituted a consolidated republic for the loose confederation.
The country's name was changed from the "United States of Colombia" to "Republic of Colombia" in order to express the dominating principle of the new regime. The sovereignty of the individual states was expressly denied in the document, and the two most refractory ones--Panama and Cundinamarca--temporarily reduced to territorial dependencies. The governors were named from Bogota instead of being elected and the right of federal intervention re-affirmed. Suffrage was limited by an educational and property qualification; the clergy were admitted to participation in politics; the Roman Catholic was declared to be the national religion, although individual freedom of worship was permitted; the presidential term was extended to six years; and an attempt was made to insure judicial independence by a life tenure.
Under this Constitution there was for a long time less disorder. In Colombia political hatreds are, however, incredibly virulent and persistent because party differences are fundamental and irreconcilable.
The clericals regard their opponents as pestilent enemies of religion and order, and the liberals anathematise the ruling party as a reactionary, corrupt, and benighted oligarchy. The exiled liberals have made repeated efforts to regain power, and the administrations have not been able to avoid a constantly mounting national expenditure and the continuation of deficits and repudiation. In 1899, a formidable insurrection, aided from Venezuela, broke out, President Sanclemente was imprisoned, and in 1900 Vice-President Marroquin assumed the executive functions. This terrible civil war ended only in November, 1902, when the insurgents surrendered their fleet and stores. President Marroquin and the conservative government seem now firmly established, backed as they are by the tremendous influence of the Church among the masses. The people are returning to their usual avocations, though business has been demoralised by the stupendous depreciation of the paper currency.
The vast expenditures of the French canal company boomed Panama, but the resulting prosperity was confined to the Isthmus. The Bogota government hoped for a great increase of income when the canal should be completed, and the abandonment of the enterprise was a disappointment. The principal subject of public preoccupation during 1903 was the negotiation with the United States concerning the permission desired by the latter to continue the work. Colombia proper has its outlet down the Magdalena to the Caribbean, and therefore has no greater special commercial interest in the building of a canal than Venezuela, Guiana, or Cuba, but the Colombians of the continent regarded the possession of the isolated Isthmian region as their most valuable national birthright, and believed that this invaluable strategic position should be used so as to obtain the utmost possible advantages for the Bogota government as well as for the people of Panama. The revenue from the Panama railway had been one of the important sources of government income and the ruling political classes considered that they were entitled to have this income largely increased if a canal was built.
The special congress summoned to consider the treaty already signed by the executive failed to ratify the agreement and adjourned, after empowering the president to try and negotiate a new one which would give Colombia a larger bonus and revenue. But the rejection of the treaty was followed by a declaration of independence on the part of the people of Panama, who believed that the United States would pay no larger sum than that already agreed upon and who saw their own interests being sacrificed for the sake of a far-distant interior region with which they had few commercial ties and whence invasion and coercion need not be feared because of the lack of practicable routes of communication. The United States and other powers promptly recognised the new nation, which at once made a canal treaty similar to that rejected by the Bogota congress.
At Bogota the first impression was one of profound dismay. The executive offered to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and ratify the rejected treaty in spite of the Senate. General Reyes, the foremost living Colombian, immediately departed for Panama as a special envoy to endeavour to persuade the people there to return to their allegiance, but his overtures were rejected, and he went to Washington on the hopeless errand of inducing the United States Government temporarily to abandon its policy of forbidding fighting on the Isthmus, so that Colombia might reduce the people of Panama to obedience. Meanwhile many Colombians blamed the Marroquin administration for the irreparable loss of Panama and ten million badly needed dollars. Some popular demonstrations occurred, and the hot-headed demanded that war be declared against the United States and an army marched across the Atrato swamps to attack Panama from the land. But the financial and topographical difficulties were so evidently insurmountable that the war talk soon died down, the demonstrations against the Government ceased, and most elements seem to have acquiesced in the election of General Reyes to the presidential term which begins in 1904. It will be under his able guidance that Colombia will start on the tedious road leading to internal peace and regeneration, to financial rehabilitation, and to the reconcilement of those fierce factions whose wars have drenched their country's soil with blood for so many decades.
PANAMA
PANAMA
THE EVENTS LEADING TO INDEPENDENCE
The history of Panama is for the most part identified with that of Colombia, which is narrated elsewhere in the present volume. It will, however, be convenient to review certain movements and tendencies of the last half-century in order to obtain a just understanding of the position and prospects of the new republic.
All the principles of advanced democratic government were included in the programme of the party which ruled Columbia from 1863 to 1883, and the statute books of the time afford ample proof that the leaders earnestly tried to put those principles into practical effect. They dreamed a Utopia, but practically their efforts only aggravated the anarchical tendencies bequeathed by the Spaniards and Bolivar. Colombian liberals still insist that a persistent enforcement of the Constitution and principles of 1863 would ultimately transform the character of the people--that religious bigotry and priestly influence would gradually disappear; that the progressive enlightenment of the masses would make military despotism and revolutions impossible; and that in process of time the relations of the states to the federal government would reach a satisfactory and workable basis. But so far as the experiment went no progress was made toward unifying the nation and pacifying the adverse elements. Discontent, disorders, civil wars increased in violence as the years went by. Though one-fifth of the federal revenues were spent on the public school system, and one-tenth of the children were nominal attendants, the clergy were permitted to have no share in their control, and retaliated by excommunicating the parents. The devotedly pious Creole mothers and wives, threatened with the closing of the confessionals and the denial of absolution, threw their incalculable influence against the atheistic government. The destruction of the convents and the confiscation of the vast ecclesiastical estates violently changed the ownership of two-thirds of the land in the confederation, but this imposition of new landlords on the industrious, oppressed, half-enslaved tenantry did not much modify real agricultural conditions. No extensive subdivision of estates resulted, and the Creole aristocracy continued to pay more attention to political intrigue than to improving their property.
[Illustration: VIEW OF PANAMA.]
Not less disappointing in its practical working was the independence of the states. Not only did the local bosses constantly abuse autonomy for their own selfish purposes, but the presidents at Bogota often ignored the constitutional rights of the states, and selected for coercion precisely those states which were farthest from the capital and most needed wide autonomous powers. Though Panama's position was isolated, its population cosmopolitan, its commercial interests and social structure peculiar, and though in colonial times its dependence on Bogota had been only nominal, the liberal presidents usually ruled it like a conquered province. Members of the Andean oligarchy poured in to batten on its revenues; the autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution proved illusory, and discontent led to repeated efforts to achieve absolute independence.