EVENTS SUCCEEDING THE ELECTION. 337 



If they choso to bo sodefrat*-,!, th* -\ should liuvo remembi-n-d that tin- prominent cause giving 

 diameter to thrir country al.road is the order and regularity which had been observed at its 

 changes <>!' ruins, ami should not only have been determined to remain quiet themhelve*, hut alo 

 have exert d their influence to restrain less prominent partisans. So lar as foreign nation* 

 eould jud^e, instead of appeals to the sword to decide between aspirants to supreme rule, as 

 under all tin- other Spanish-American governments, in Chile the moral power and purity of its 

 Constitution remained intact. No doubt there were some of its citizens who would prefer any 

 ruler to the horrors of civil war and domestic losses, with injury to the national reputation ; but 

 these were a small minority not those who craved the archbishopric, a Ministerio, or Inten- 

 dencia not those whose relatives had been imprisoned or banished since April, or who still 

 lurked in obscure places under cover of the night. Tliey were at work from July collecting 

 money, and insidiously corrupting the troops and lower orders. 



At first General Cruz took no part with them. In fact, he had always belonged to the 

 Pelucon* party, against which the contest would have been fratricidal. But he was not per- 

 mitted to remain quiet. Those who had nominated him, did so in anticipation of the very 

 emergency which had occurred. They needed a military leader to carry out their schemes, and 

 began by painting in the strongest colors the chains with which the administration was 

 gradually enslaving the nation. Twenty years of peace, they said, had built upon the ashes 

 of liberty a love of spoils. The rights their fathers had fought for, and thought to transmit to 

 them through the Constitution, though nominally existing, had been violated one by one, and 

 now none dare claim them. Such sentiments fell not idly on a man who was smarting under the 

 mortification of dismissal from office, and subsequent defeat through illegal influence of the 

 same party ; and the emissaries from Santiago and Coquimbo were not long in bringing about 

 their objects. Whilst the citizens of the capital were enjoying the national festivities, those of 

 Concepcion were celebrating his pronunciamiento. This was the only paper made public, in 

 which the causes for an appeal to arms are specified ; and the portion of it embracing these 

 reasons is worthy of a place here on that account. It is addressed to the army, whom he hails : 



' t Old Companions ! The last political act of the province of Concepcion placed me at the 

 head of a heroic people, who desire to reconquer rights trodden down by a government con- 

 verted into a faction of party, which intends to annul the republic, and with it justice and the 

 liberty of its citizens. I have merited the confidence of my fellow-countrymen, who have con- 

 fided to me the honorable charge of defender of their imprescriptible rights a charge that I 

 can only fulfil aided by the noble abnegation of citizens ready to sacrifice themselves for 

 liberty and the country. 



" I have been called by the provinces of Concepcion and Coquimbo, always united in their 

 patriotism and noble tasks. I have been called by hundreds of citizens who, in the other pro- 

 vinces, groan under the weight of the harshest despotism. I have been called by the dolorous 

 clamor of mothers and wives whose sons live in the filth of prisons, or whose husbands beg in 

 a foreign land the bitter bread of the proscribed. 



" My feelings, my honor, my convictions have finally imposed on me the duty of accepting a 

 revolution whose spirit is to reconstruct the republic that republic conquered by the precious 

 blood of our fathers, the heroes of Independence. I have never been able to remain indifferent 

 to the establishment of a dictatorship, in which flattery of the ambition of a man to whom 

 public opinion and the rights of a citizen are of no value must always terminate. 



" Accepting the responsibility of such a sacred duty, I have a right to count on the heroic 

 co-operation of my old companions in arms, on their pure patriotism, on their established 

 valor. At the voice of an oppressed country I have recovered the strength debilitated by years 

 of campaigning, that I may consecrate to it the last services of my life. Where is the soldier 



Literally a big tcig, or one who arrays himself in fantastic dresses. The reader will probably see its origin in misapprehen- 

 sion of the English words whig and wig. 



43 



