The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

VIEW OF SANTIAGO, CHILE, ABOUT 1835.

Though he owed his elevation to his military successes the new president did not attempt to rule as a dictator, and co-operated cordially with the vice-president in organising a parliamentary civil government on an enduring basis. Prieto played not illy the rôle of a Washington to Portales' Hamilton. Militarism, radicalism, and federalism had been tried and found wanting and the great conservative statesman took care that the new order should be tainted with none of them. Two years were spent in careful experiment and deliberation, and the Constitution framed in 1833 has remained, with a few amendments, the fundamental law of Chile to this day. The most aristocratic and centralised of American Constitutions, it has given Chile the strongest and stablest government in Spanish America. The foundation of political power is the property-holding class. No man may vote unless he possesses land, invested capital, or an equivalent income from his trade or profession, and congress may fix the amount of the qualification as high as it pleases. Political power originated in the oligarchy, and its exercise was delegated to a president whose functions are even more extensive than those of the chief magistrate of the United States. Ipso facto commander-in-chief of the armed forces, free to select his cabinet and the chief functionaries of state without the confirmation of a senate, not subject to impeachment, possessing an effective control over the judiciary, given a practically absolute veto, with the intendentes of the provinces and the governors of the departments receiving from him their commissions and acting as his agents, it would seem that the president of Chile is little less than an absolute and irresponsible ruler. But from the beginning the executive was in practice dependent upon the oligarchy as represented in congress. The instances in which a president has tried to rule in defiance of the wishes of the aristocracy have been rare, and never successful.

When Prieto's first term expired in 1836, many of the conservatives pressed Portales to accept the presidency, but he was satisfied with his place as chief minister. Under his vigorous and intelligent direction the courts and clergy had been reformed, the police organised, a national guard created, the budgets balanced, the executive and congress worked harmoniously together, peace and order had replaced confusion. Chile's feet had been placed on the path of social and industrial progress.

The exiled Freire meanwhile was receiving aid from Santa Cruz who had recently created the Peru-Bolivian Confederation with himself as its chief, and whose ambitious designs included the installation of a government in Chile which would be his complaisant and obliged friend. With arms obtained in Peru, General Freire made a descent upon the island of Chiloë, but the rebellion was quickly suppressed, war declared against Santa Cruz, and the Peruvian fleet surprised and seized. While the army of invasion was waiting for the order to embark a few companies engaged in a mutiny which brought about a horrible tragedy. Portales had come to the camp to watch the preparations. The mutineers seized him as hostage, and fleeing to the interior carried him along locked in a closed carriage. In the middle of the winter night they encountered a detachment of government troops, and with the first volley the guards stopped the carriage. A man got out, walked unflinchingly to the side of the road, a half dozen shots rang out in the still air, and he fell. When the first light of dawn illumined the field, the victorious national guards found a body lying pierced by four bullets—it was Portales. But his work had been too thoroughly done for even his own death to affect it. He had found his country feeble and divided, torn by feud and faction; he left her prosperous, united, possessing surplus vitality for a successful foreign war. Prieto and the conservatives were not shaken; the expedition to Peru proceeded, and though the first failed, the second won the battle of Yungay, overthrew Santa Cruz, and made Chile the dominant power on the Pacific coast.

At the end of his two terms of five years each, Prieto was succeeded by General Bulnes, the hero of the war. Foreign commerce was increasing by leaps and bounds; the growth of the customs revenues put government finances on a sound footing; the expenses of the war against Santa Cruz had been provided for out of current income. William Wheelwright had established the first steamship line on the Pacific. The political policy of Bulnes was as repressive toward the liberals as his predecessor's. However, education and literary activity were encouraged; a new university was inaugurated at Santiago in 1843. The opera and the drama flourished, and society took on a more intellectual and cosmopolitan tone. Even religious doctrine and the relations of Church and State were discussed with considerable freedom and warmth, and everywhere were signs of an awakening—a flowering out of the industrial, commercial, and intellectual life of the nation. German colonists were induced to settle in the forested valleys and mountains of the South, and that part of Chile became and has remained more Teutonic than Latin. The discovery of gold in California opened a market for Chilean wheat and gave a fresh impetus to commerce and agriculture, while the mines of Copiapo began to yield their inexhaustible wealth.

Bulnes was re-elected without opposition in 1846, but a new Chile had grown up in the fifteen years of peaceful order. Though the old liberals had disappeared, a new party had arisen all the more formidable because its principles were moderate and it sought not dictatorships, military government, or federalism, but only administrative reforms, such as restraining the clergy and widening the suffrage. By 1849 the liberals had a majority in congress and an agitated session ensued. The conservative president was pushed into an attitude of uncompromising resistance to the liberal demands. Manuel Montt, the intellectual leader of the conservatives, a strong and ambitious man, who was known to have the courage and firmness to maintain himself against odds, was selected as Bulnes' successor. His elevation in the spring of 1851 was followed by an armed outbreak, which the government troops suppressed, but in September the revolution flamed forth with redoubled fury.

From Concepcion, the liberal headquarters, marched an army which gained several victories and even threatened the capital. But the conservatives rallied and in December the issue was decided by the bloody battle of Loncomilla. In Chile, a narrow plain shut in between the Andes and the sea, losers cannot hide; a single encounter in force is enough; civil wars cannot be prolonged in remote provinces or by the flight of the defeated to inaccessible deserts. Though the destruction of life and property had been frightful—four thousand Chileans perishing and commerce and industry being paralysed for the moment—peace was immediately re-established and the nation rapidly recovered. A general amnesty buried the doings of the insurgents in oblivion, and former liberals were welcomed as members of the party which Montt and Varas, his able minister, organised. Though their faces were set against political innovations they adopted many important administrative reforms. The admirable civil code prepared by Bello was given to the country, replacing the complicated and confusing mass of old Spanish laws by clear and systematic legislation. The tariff was lowered and differential duties as between foreign countries were abolished. Commercial courts were installed, decimal coinage adopted, church tithes converted into a moderate fixed tax, treaties of commerce and amity negotiated with the great commercial nations, missions established among the Araucanians, and public libraries and schools were multiplied.

On the other hand, Montt and Varas relentlessly pursued a policy of centralisation, subjecting even the affairs of the municipalities to the control of the Santiago bureaucracy. Re-elected as a matter of course in 1856, Montt's second term was even more intransigent than his first. Many leading liberals were driven from the country, and minor insurrections broke out more than once, only to be sternly suppressed. The landed aristocracy had, however, ceased to be unanimous against concessions; its more progressive members belonged now to the liberal party; and the "montt-varistas" in congress were compelled to ally themselves now with the clericals, now with the liberals, in order to secure a working majority. In 1858 Montt came to an open rupture with congress because it insisted on passing a law permitting the return of his banished political enemies. Meanwhile he had alienated the clergy by compelling the ecclesiastical authorities to submit to the decisions of the civil tribunals, and some conservatives united with the liberals against him in the elections in the fall of 1858. His measures became arbitrary and oppressive. Newspapers were suppressed, meetings dispersed, and agitators imprisoned. At the end of the year a great meeting was called at the capital to promote a reform of the Constitution. The government forbade it as a menace to public order, and the dissatisfaction was so wide-spread that Montt proclaimed martial law.

The liberals in the southern and northern provinces simultaneously rose in rebellion and for four months civil war raged furiously. Gallo, a young, rich, and powerful leader, was at the head of the insurrection in the North and at first he defeated the government forces and occupied Coquimbo. But his hopes were crushed by the news that the southern liberals advancing from Concepcion had been repulsed at Chillan, enabling Montt to concentrate the whole army against him. Four thousand regulars routed the two thousand men who followed Gallo, and the remnants fled across the Argentine border. Defeated and banished, the liberals in reality had won. The seriousness of the rebellion had convinced the aristocracy that concessions must be made or a renewal of the conflict would be inevitable. Montt did not seek a re-election, and it was necessary to unite on some man of high personal prestige, and of distinguished family, who had remained neutral in the recent struggle. Such a one was found in Perez, who accordingly received the unanimous vote of the electoral college and was inaugurated in 1861. That the new president's policy would be one of reconciliation and compromise was soon made evident by his procuring the passage of a law granting amnesty for political offences. A coalition of moderate liberals and conservatives threw Montt and Varas with their party of "nationalists" into opposition along with the radicals or "reds" under the leadership of Gallo. The curious spectacle was presented of two sets of men, united in an alliance against the administration, who only two years before had been fighting in the field, and who now professed the most radically divergent political opinions. Fierce parliamentary struggles ensued, but they were confined to the floor of congress and to changes in the ministry.