COSTUMES OF NATIVES NEAR QUITO.
Flores, however, managed to hold Guayaquil and Cuenca as well as Quito and must therefore be regarded as the founder of Ecuador, though his reactionary, absolute, and violent government was hated by all that was young, intelligent, and liberal in the country. The Indian peasants groaned under the burden of taxes imposed to subsidise a horde of functionaries. Finances were in deplorable confusion; the public debts left unpaid; population decreased, especially in the Andean region; agriculture, industry, and commerce remained stationary, except in the cacao districts on the coast. The lower classes had a hard struggle for bare existence, and the parasitical ruling race was solely pre-occupied with political war and intrigue. But it cannot fairly be said that Flores or any other one man was responsible. The lamentable condition of affairs resulted inevitably from the long struggle with Spain and from the situation, character, and ideals of the people. But such a janizary system of government was too burdensome, unwieldy, and wasteful not to fall by its own weight sooner or later. The people were simply unable to pay the taxes which Flores levied vainly trying to satisfy his troops. Mutinies broke out among the latter, and the liberals were encouraged to organise.
A revolutionary society was formed in Quito whose ramifications extended among the enthusiastic youth in every part of the republic. In Guayaquil, the wealthiest and most commercial city, the demand for better financial administration became universal. In 1833 Vicente Rocafuerte, the foremost of Ecuadorean liberals and the most accomplished public man in the country, openly assumed the leadership of the opposition to Flores. Elected a member of congress he bravely defied the dictator, who sentenced him to banishment. But when he reached Guayaquil the troops and citizens of that city arose to support him. Flores led an army down the Andes and attacked and captured Guayaquil, Rocafuerte and his partisans escaped and kept up the struggle at different points of the coast, while sympathetic insurrections broke out on the plateau in Flores's rear. Though the dictator finally succeeded in capturing Rocafuerte, the only use he was able to make of his victory was to secure better terms from the liberals. Rocafuerte and he formed an alliance and together they pacified the country, the former becoming president and the latter retaining command of the army. Ecuador enjoyed her first real respite from civil war and tumult since 1809, and Rocafuerte's inauguration in 1835 marks the beginning of civil and constitutional government.
