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PAPELES DE CLAUDIO. |
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CONSPIRACY,
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| Philosophies instead of leaders, philanthropy instead of legislation, dialectics instead of tactics, and rhetoric instead of soldiers. Treasonable acts had gone unpunished, particularly on the part of the Spaniards who had been allowed to remain in the country and had kept it in a perpetual state of unrest, promoting endless conspiracies and always getting off with a free pardon. Every conspiracy was followed by a pardon, and every pardon by another conspiracy, pardoned again in its turn because it was said that liberal governments should be distinguished for their clemency. Criminal clemency, Bolivar called it. It had done more than anything to wreck the machinery of government, almost before the machinery was in working order. Then, again, instead of raising and training a disciplined body of troops, while there was still time, they had hastily improvised innumerable bands of undisciplined militia, and these, besides wasting public money on the pay and allowances of the higher ranks, had ruined the country's agriculture by taking workers from the land, bringing hatred on the government, because it had compelled these men to take up arms and leave their families. Bolivar's criticism of the military policy of the Republic is harsh, but true, Bolivar too was learning. Republics, it was said, had no need to pay men for preserving their liberties. When the enemy attacked, every citizen would become a soldier. In Venezuela, the result had shown how far our that calculation was, for the militiamen who went to meet the enemy often did not know how to handle their weapons, and being unused to discipline or to obeying any kind of orders, they were crushed at the very beginning of the campaign, in spite of the heroic efforts made by some of their officers to lead them to victory. So much for the military mistakes. Other mistakes of the same kind had been made in regard to administration. The dissipation of public funds on frivolous and prejudicial objects and particularly in the salaries of an infinite number of clerks, secretaries, law-officers, provincial and federal officers which had dealt a mortal blow to the Republic because it obliged them to fall back upon the perilous expedient of paper money, with no other backing than force and the imaginary revenues of the State. A million pesos had been issued by 1811, based on import duties and the tobacco monopoly, but as funds for redemption were lacking, the notes steadily depreciated in value. Bolivar's remarks on the psychological affects of paper money in Venezuela are very interesting. That new form of currency seemed in the eyes of most people a clear violation of the rights of property. They saw themselves deprived of objects of intrinsic value in exchange for something whose value was uncertain and even illusory. The paper money was crowning disillusion of the solid and respectable people of the interior. They sometimes called in the commander of the nearest Spanish troops to come and deliver them from a kind of money which they regarded with far more horror than subjection to Spain. As if this were not enough, there was the earthquake, which Bolivar said, had exasperated the feelings of the fanatics and increased the influence of the clergy, always ready to lend their support to any form of despotism. Last of all, there was federalism. The Venezuelan Constitution of 1811 had been modeled on the United States Constitution of 1787 and the French declaration of the Rights of Man, while the political organization followed that of the United States in adopting the principles of state sovereignty. That, in the eyes of Bolivar, was one of the rocks on which they had been wrecked. It might well be the most perfect system from the point of view of human happiness, but it was opposed to all the interest of an infant republic. | ||||||
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