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the style of a bad rhetorician, than of a practical statesman."There is only one individual guilty," said he, and it is I, because I did not return sooner. Let your blows be directed against me: they will be welcome to me, if they can assuage your resentments. I am now on the soil of the commonwealth, let there be no more Venezuela, or Cundinamarca, we are all Colombians." His influence, however, acquired by great services, prudence, and moderation, the respect which both parties entertertained for him, and the confidence which they reposed in him, rendered his journey a scene of triumph over even internal dissentions. Both parties had equally marked his return; they had appealed to him as an arbiter and mediator. His presence and persuasion, in addition to his authority as head of the executive, immediately recalled several municipalities from their errors, and reestablished constitutional order in the departments of the Equator, Guayaquil, and Azuay. He exasperated neither faction, and was sparing of punishment: in one department be removed only the intendant; in another, only the commandant general. He was indulgent to the errors, and sympathized with the wounded feelings, of Paez; Paez was personally attached to him; and the breach between Venezuela and the republic seemed, for the time at least, to be again healed.

The finances of Colombia were already in no flourishing state, and these scenes of civil discord, cutting off, as they did, the sources of the common revenue from the treasury of the government which had contracted common debts, 109

added greatly to its pecuniary embarrassments. The executive seemed inclined to act with perfect good faith towards its European creditors: nay, so auxious was it to make provision for the payment of the interest on its loans, that the agent at Bogota of Goldschmidt and Co. the contractor for the last loan of 4,750,000l. negociated in London, having applied in March to the minister of finance for information as to any measures which had been taken to insure payment of the dividends, that minister replied on the 8th of April, that the government had already provided the funds necessary to discharge the interest which was to become due in July, and that instructions to this effect had been communicated to the minister of the republic in London. "Thus," added M. de Castillo, "even the delay has been foreseen which might have taken place in the payment of the bills drawn for this purpose, and negociated in Peru." But Colombia, in trusting to these Peruvian bills, was leaning on a broken reed. The matter stood thus: Colombia had incurred enormous expenses in supporting the independent party in Peru in their successful contest against the mother-country; she justly thought herself entitled to re-imbursement, and had made an arrangement with the Peruvian government by which part of these expenses were to be repaid within the year. The latter, in the beginning of the year, was about to negociate a loan in London; part of that loan it was to set aside for a repayment to Colombia; and the part so set aside Colombia appropriated to the payment of the interest on her own European debt ;

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the necessary bills were drawn upon the Peruvian agents in London, by whom they were to be paid to M. Hurtado, the Colom'bian minister; these were the funds to which Colombia trusted as providing for the payment of her dividends long before they were due, and these were the bills to which her minister of finance referred in his answer to the agent of the contractors on the 8th of April. It was a great and improvident error in the Colombian government, possessing independent revenues of their own, to risk their public credit, on the resources and punctuality of a state so much less settled than their own, as was that of Peru. Unfortunately the pledges which Peru could give were not such as to satisfy those from whom she wished to borrow, and the application of her commissioners for a loan was made just at the time when the money market in London was at a stand, when mercantile confidence was gone, and when even English merchants, who, of all men, are most safely trusted, found their credit of no avail. Peru was unable to obtain a loan; the Colombian bills drawn upon her agents were dishonoured; and the Colombian government found itself, all at once, under the necessity of providing, if possible, other funds for the payment of dividends, for the discharge of which she had implicitly trusted to the ability of her neighbour to borrow.

So soon as this disappointment was known at Bogota, Santander, in virtue of the powers vested in the executive by the constitution, convoked an extraordinary session of congress for the 3rd of May, for the purpose of devising means

to meet the pecuniary engagements of the republic. When they met, he told them in his message, that the executive had received the disagreeable intelligence that it could not dispose of the funds with which it had intended to pay the interest due on the foreign debt, and provide for the gradual extinction of the capital.

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Government," said he, had well-grounded hopes that the successive improvement of our finances, and the reductions which would be made in the public expenditure in the war department, would leave means sufficient to meet the pecuniary engagements of the republic, without its being necessary to burthen the people with fresh contributions; but, as the improvement of the revenue is not the work of a moment, and it would not be prudent in our present state to diminish the army, the executive had appropriated a part of what was owing us by Peru for the payment of the interest of the foreign debt during the present year. The government of Peru determined to negociate a loan in Europe, to facilitate the reimbursement of the debt it had contracted to the republic of Colombia; but, from circumstances which were not within its control, the negotiation was not successful. In consequence of this unexpected occurrence, the executive sees itself surrounded with serious difficulties, which you alone, from the nature of your functions, are able to remove. The honour of the nation being deeply involved, and our public faith being compromised, I have judged it absolutely necessary to convoke congress on an extraordinary session."

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Congress immediately enacted two laws to meet the emergency; and, if good intentions as to the disposal of revenue could have produced the revenue to be dis posed of, the creditors of Colombia would have had little reason to complain. By the first of these laws, bearing date the 15th of May, the amount of the national debt, both foreign and domestic, was clearly ascertained, and distinctly recognized. The foreign recognized debt was 6,750,000l. viz. 2,000,0007. of the loan of 1822, and 4,750,0001, of the loan of 1824; and of this debt it was enacted, that it had yielded, and should continue to yield, to the creditor, interest at the rate of six per cent. The domestic debt was of two kinds; first, a sum of about two millions of dollars, consisting partly of sums ascertained by the commission of liquidation, and partly of a loan contracted in 1823, to cover the expense of equipping the troops of Apure; such parts of this debt as had hitherto borne five per cent were to continue at that rate of interest, and such parts as had hitherto yielded less were to be raised in future to five per cent: Secondly, sums remaining due as the value of military property, which, in 1821, had been declared to belong to the servants of the republic, to the amount of 5,458,600 dollars, the half of the allowances to civil and military officers which had been withheld for the public service in 1819; and the third of their pay which had been withheld from the same persons in 1821; these debts were to bear interest at the rate of three per cent from the 1st of July, 1826. For the payment of

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the interest of the foreign debt, and the gradual extinction of the capital were set apart, 1, All the clear produce of the revenue of tobacco; 2, one-eighth of the produce of the customs; 3, the whole produce of the uncultivated lands which might be sold or let; 4, the whole produce arising from the sale or farming of the mines of every kind of metal belonging to the republic; 5, the surplus of the branches of the revenue appropriated to the payment of the interest of the domestic debt. The branches of revenue set apart for this latter purpose, again, were:-1, The revenue arising from the mortgages, and sequestrated or confiscated property not yet adjudicated; and the revenue arising from the property sequestrated or confiscated in 1821 and 1824; 2, the revenue arising from the property of Majorats, which were to be included in the national property; 3, the revenue of lands and other property within the territory of the republic, belonging under any title whatever to the republic as national property; 4, the revenue of property and temporalities which had not been alienated or adjudicated; 5, the revenue of the property belonging to the extinct inquisition not yet transferred or adjudicated, these branches to be appropriated solely to the extinction of the capital; 6, the revenues arising from mortgages on real property condemned, and which might be realised in money; 7, the clear produce of the stamps, and the fines arising from the infraction of the stamp acts; 8, the produce arising from the notification of hypothecs, and the registration

lation of the law. A Mr. Foley left Bogota on the 4th of July with 240,000 dollars; but when the money arrived at Carthagena, an order from the executive com manded that 40,000 dollars should be immediately paid to the troops, and that the remainder should be detained until further instructions. The troops in Panama, Carthagena, and Santa Martha, had ally large claims for arrears; the government, in existing circumstances, could not use liberties with debts due to them; for the troops of Venezuela and Apure had formally declared themselves against the constitution. The consequence was, that no portion of the dollars reached Europe, the dividends remained unpaid, and Colombia was bankrupt. Yet, even in October, a policy was opened, and under-written in London, by the authority of the Colombian minister, to insure 160,0007. from Carthagena to London, when not a dollar was ready to be shipped, and the whole treasure in the mint of Bogota did not exceed 300,000 dollars. The consequence was, a temporary rise in the price of Colombian stock and immediate disappointment. Mr. Foley had powers to negociate a new loan, or obtain the necessary advances from private individuals, on the security of the custom-houses at La Guayra, Carthagena, Guayaquil, &c.; but the attempt was not more successful than it was modest.

The Congress, during its ordinary session, introduced the warehousing system by an act which declared Puerto Cabello, and Carthagena on the Atlantic, and Guayaquil on the Pacific, to be

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ports of deposit for all kinds of goods and merchandise. The goods imported were to remain in the warehouses of the customs until taken out for the purpose of ti being sold, or re-exported, and were to be charged, in the interim,|| with a duty of four per centonit the amount of the invoice, the duty being payable when they were taken out. If taken out for sale, the import duties were to bels paid by instalments, the dates of these instalments being calculated from the day on which the goods, were taken out of the customhouse. In case the goods or merchandize were taken out with a view of re-exporting them, whether to any other ports of the republic, or to foreign ports, they were not to pay any import duty in the ports of deposit; but, if afterwards introduced into any port of the republic, they were there to pay the import duties provided by law, The transit duty on foreign goods crossing the isthmus from the one ocean to the other, was fixed at two per cent on the amount of the invoice. In the month of March ch an act had been passed abolishing the duties on some articles when exported, and reducing that on others; t bt Paez, when he assumed the supreme power in the maritime department of Venezuela, ordered the operation of this law to be suspended, and the old duties to be levied, because he found it difficult to provide money, and "such alterations," as he expressed himself in his decree, "could not be introduced in moments of difficulty."

After a siege of four years, the garrison of St. Juan de Ulloa, pressed by want, and reduced to