"But what do they do?" I asked. "The men scrape money together, and when they have enough they build a house, big or little according to the amount that they have scraped: that satisfies the ambition of a Costa Rican. When he wishes to amuse himself, he goes to a cock-fight." "And the women?" "They get married early if their fathers can give them a few ounces"—the ounce is the old doubloon, worth here about three pounds eight shillings sterling—"and then they cook, and have children." "And if the ounces be wanting, and they don't get married?" "Then they cook all the same, but do not have the children,—as a general rule." And so people vegetate in Costa Rica.
And now I must say a word or two about the form of government in this country. It is a republic, of course, arranged on the model plan. A president is elected for a term of years,—in this case six. He has ministers who assist him in his government, and whom he appoints; and there is a House of Congress, elected of course by the people, who make the laws. The President merely carries them out, and so Utopia is realized.
Utopia might perhaps be realized in such republics, or at any rate the realization might not be so very distant as it is at present, were it not that in all of them the practice, by some accident, runs so far away from the theory.
In Costa Rica, Don Juan Rafael Mora, familiarly called Juanito, is now the president, having been not long since re-elected (?) for the third time. "We read in the 'Gazette' on Tuesday morning that the election had been carried on Saturday, and that was all we knew about it." It is thus they elect a president in Costa Rica; no one knows anything about it, or troubles his head with the matter. If any one suggested a rival president, he would be banished. But such a thing is not thought of; no note is taken as to five years or six years. At some period that pleases him, the President says that he has been re-elected, and he is re-elected. Who cares? Why not Juanito as well as any one else? Only it is a pity he will not let us sell our dulce to the distillers!
The President's salary is three thousand dollars a year; an income which for so high a position is moderate enough. But then a further sum of six thousand dollars is added to this for official entertainment. The official entertainments, however, are not numerous. I was informed that he usually gives one party every year. He himself still lives in his private house, and still keeps a shop, as he did before he was president. It must be remembered that there is no aristocracy in this country above the aristocracy of the shopkeepers.
As far as I could learn, the Congress is altogether a farce. There is a congress or collection of men sent up from different parts of the country, some ten or dozen of whom sit occasionally round a table in the great hall; but they neither debate, vote, nor offer opinions. Some one man, duly instructed by the President, lets them know what law is to be made or altered, and the law is made or altered. Should any member of Congress make himself disagreeable, he would, as a matter of course, be banished; taken, that is, to Punta-arenas, and there told to shift for himself. Now this enforced journey to Punta-arenas does not seem to be more popular among the Costa Ricans than a journey to Siberia is among the Russians.
Such is the model republic of Central America,—admitted, I am told, to be the best administered of the cluster of republics there established. This, at any rate, may certainly be said for it—that life and property are safe. They are safe for the present, and will probably remain so, unless the filibusters make their way into the neighbouring state of Nicaragua in greater numbers and with better leaders than they have hitherto had.
And it must be told to the credit of the Costa Ricans, that it was by them and their efforts that the invasion of Walker and the filibusters into Central America was stopped and repelled. These enterprising gentlemen, the filibusters, landed on the coast of Nicaragua, having come down from California. Here they succeeded in getting possession of a large portion of the country, that portion being the most thickly populated and the richest; many of the towns they utterly destroyed, and among them Granada, the capital. It seems that at this time the whole state of Nicaragua was paralyzed, and unable to strike any blow in its own defence.
Having laid waste the upper or more northern country, Walker came down south as far as Rivas, a town still in Nicaragua, but not far removed from the borders of Costa Rica. His intention, doubtless, was to take possession of Costa Rica, so that he might command the whole transit across the isthmus.
But at Rivas he was attacked by the soldiery of Costa Rica, under the command of a brother of Don Juan Mora. This was in 1856, and it seems that some three thousand Costa Ricans were taken as far as Rivas. But few of them returned. They were attacked by cholera, and what with that, and want, and the intense heat, to which of course must be added what injuries the filibusters could do them, they were destroyed, and a remnant only returned.