EVENTS SUCCEEDING THE ELECTION. ;;;j'j 



civil authority. It is said that they imprisoned him for a short time ; and it in certain he was 

 sent \\ithout the city of Serena long before the termination of the siege. Col. Arteaga wat 



.it tin- head of the military force. 



If Cm/ had reached Santiago in triumph, the government forces in other portioiiH of tie re- 

 puhlic won hi have abandoned the contest at once; and it is more than probahle that the revolu- 

 tionary chiefs on failing to obtain the positions they conceived due to them, as many must have 

 done, would have incorporated themselves with the troops from the north, and have marched 

 against him after a very brief delay. What the end of such a struggle would have been, it is not 

 ditlicult to foretell : anarchy, loss of public credit, and the reduction of the nation to the level of 

 the rest of Spanish-America. As it is, what did the liberal party gain? Not the concession 

 of a single withheld right, neither freedom nor purity of suffrage, no extension of municipal 

 privileges, no equalization of public receipts and expenditures between North and South ; but, 

 on the other hand, it cost their country the lives of 4,000 of its working men, more than 

 $2,000,000 of its capital, effected the banishment of fathers and brothers by hundreds, and, 

 temporarily at least, paralyzed its commerce, agriculture, and mineral resources. 



