red anything
like the calamities of its ally. In 1880 it had adopted a permanent
constitution and it now entered upon a course of slow and relatively
peaceful progress.

In the republics to the northward struggles between clericals and
radicals caused sharp, abrupt alternations in government. In Ecuador the
hostility between clericals and radicals was all the more bitter because
of the rivalry of the two chief towns, Guayaquil the seaport and Quito
the capital, each of which sheltered a faction. No sooner therefore had
Garcia Moreno fallen than the radicals of Guayaquil rose up against the
clericals at Quito. Once in power, they hunted their enemies down until
order under a dictator could be restored. The military President who
assumed power in 1876 was too radical to suit the clericals and too
clerical to suit the radicals. Accordingly his opponents decided to make
the contest three-cornered by fighting the dictator and one another.
When the President had been forced out, a conservative took charge until
parties of bushwhackers and mutinous soldiers were able to install a
military leader, whose retention of power was brief. In 1888 another
conservative, who had been absent from the country when elected and who
was an adept in law and diplomacy, managed to win sufficient support
from all three factions to retain office for the constitutional period.

In Colombia a financial crisis had been approaching ever since the
price of coffee, cocoa, and other Colombian products had fallen in the
European markets. This decrease had caused a serious diminution in
the export trade and had forced gold and silver practically out of
circulation. At the same time the various "states" were increasing their
powers at the expense of the federal Government, and the country was
rent by factions. In order to give the republic a thoroughly centralized
administration which would restore financial confidence and bring back
the influence of the Church as a social and political factor, a genuine
revolution, which was started in 1876, eventually put an end to both
radicalism and states' rights. At the outset Rafael Nunez, the unitary
and clerical candidate and a lawyer by profession, was beaten on the
field, but at a subsequent election he obtained the requisite number of
votes and, in 1880, assumed the presidency. That the loser in war should
become the victor in peace showed the futility of bloodshed in such
revolutions.

Not until Nunez came