vancement, he fell by the hand of an assassin in
1875. But the system which he had done so much to establish in Ecuador
survived him for many years.

Although Brazil did not escape the evils of insurrection which retarded
the growth of nearly all of its neighbors, none of its numerous
commotions shook the stability of the nation to a perilous degree. By
1850 all danger of revolution had vanished. The country began to enter
upon a career of peace and progress under a regime which combined
broadly the federal organization of the United States with the form of
a constitutional monarchy. Brazil enjoyed one of the few enlightened
despotisms in South America. Adopting at the outset the parliamentary
system, the Emperor Pedro II chose his ministers from among the liberals
or conservatives, as one party or the other might possess a majority
in the lower house of the Congress. Though the legislative power of the
nation was enjoyed almost entirely by the planters and their associates
who formed the dominant social class, individual liberty was fully
guaranteed, and even freedom of conscience and of the press was allowed.
Negro slavery, though tolerated, was not expressly recognized.

Thanks to the political discretion and unusual personal qualities of
"Dom Pedro," his popularity became more and more marked as the years
went on. A patron of science and literature, a scholar rather than a
ruler, a placid and somewhat eccentric philosopher, careless of the
trappings of state, he devoted himself without stint to the public
welfare. Shrewdly divining that the monarchical system might not survive
much longer, he kept his realm pacified by a policy of conciliation.
Pedro II even went so far as to call himself the best republican in the
Empire. He might have said, with justice perhaps, that he was the best
republican in the whole of Hispanic America. What he really accomplished
was the successful exercise of a paternal autocracy of kindness and
liberality over his subjects.

If more or less permanent dictators and occasional liberators were the
order of the day in most of the Spanish American republics, intermittent
dictators and liberators dashed across the stage in Mexico from 1829
well beyond the middle of the century. The other countries could show
numerous instances in which the occupant of the chief magistracy held
office to the close of his constitutional term; but Mexico could not
show a single one! What Mexico furnished, inste