the
parliamentary, a presidential autocracy with the spread of real
democracy or a congressional oligarchy based on the existing order. The
sincerity and public spirit of both contestants helped to lend dignity
to the conflict.

Jose Manuel Balmaceda, a man of marked ability, who became President in
1886, had devoted much of his political life to urging an enlargement
of the executive power, a greater freedom to municipalities in the
management of their local affairs, and a broadening of the suffrage.
He had even advocated a separation of Church and State. Most of these
proposals so conservative a land as Chile was not prepared to accept.
Though civil marriage was authorized and ecclesiastical influence
was lessened in other respects, the Church stood firm. During his
administration Balmaceda introduced many reforms, both material and
educational. He gave a great impetus to the construction of public
works, enhanced the national credit by a favorable conversion of the
public debt, fostered immigration, and devoted especial attention to the
establishment of secondary schools. Excellent as the administration of
Balmaceda had been in other respects, he nevertheless failed to combine
the liberal factions into a party willing to support the plans of reform
which he had steadily favored. The parliamentary system made Cabinets
altogether unstable, as political groups in the lower house of the
Congress alternately cohered and fell apart. This defect, Balmaceda
thought, should be corrected by making the members of his official
family independent of the legislative branch. The Council of State, a
somewhat anomalous body placed between the President and Cabinet on the
one side and the Congress on the other, was an additional obstruction to
a smooth-running administration. For it he would substitute a tribunal
charged with the duty of resolving conflicts between the two chief
branches of government. Balmaceda believed, also, that greater liberty
should be given to the press and that existing taxes should be altered
as rarely as possible. On its side, the Congress felt that the President
was trying to establish a dictatorship and to replace the unitary system
by a federal union, the probable weakness of which would enable him to
retain his power more securely.

Toward the close of his term in January, 1891, when the Liberals
declined to support his candidate for the presidency, Balmaceda, furious
at the opposition which he had enc