262 The Naturalist in N icaragua 
Some of the Presidents have not hesitated to throw their 
political opponents into prison at the time of an election, and 
I heard of one well-authenticated instance where an elector 
was placed, uncovered, in the middle of one of the plazas, 
with his arms stretched out to their full extent and each 
thumb thrust down into the barrel of an upright musket, and 
kept a few hours in the blazing sun until he agreed to vote 
according to the wish of the party in power. A change of 
rulers can only be effected by a so-called revolution; with 
all the machinery of a republic, the will of the people can 
only be known by the issue of a civil war. 
With high-sounding phrases of the equality of man, the 
lower orders are kept in a state almost approaching to serf- 
dom. The poor Indians toil and spin, and cultivate the 
ground, being almost the only producers. Yet in the revolu- 
tionary outbreaks they are driven about like cattle, and 
forced into the armies that are raised. Central America’ 
declared its independence of Spain in 1823, and constituted 
itself a republic, under the name of the United States of 
Central America. The confederacy, which consisted of 
Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa 
Rica, was broken up in 1840, ‘when each of the States became 
an independent republic. Ever since, revolutionary out- 
breaks have been periodical, and the States, with the excep- 
tion of Costa Rica, have steadily decreased in wealth and 
produce. 
It would be ungenerous of me, in this condemnation of the 
political parties of Central America, not to state that there 
are many individuals who view with alarm and shame the 
decadence of their country. Such, however, is the state of 
public opinion, that their voices are unheard, or listened to 
with indifference. There seems to be some radical incapacity 
in the Latin races to comprehend what we consider true 
political economy. The will of the majority is not the law 
of the land, but the will of the strongest in arms. They 
cannot understand that a republic has no more divine right 
than a monarchy; that a country having an hereditary 
sovereign at its head, if it is governed in consonance with the 
wishes of the greatest number of its inhabitants, is freer than 
a republic where a minority rules by force of arms. They 
make a principle out of what is a mere detail of government 
