No. 120.J

No. 100.

Mr. Williamson to Mr. Fish.

[Extract.]

UNITED STATES LEGATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA,

Guatemala, March 23, 1874. (Received April 20.) SIR: I have the honor to inform you the government of Guatemala has recently issued two decrees in regard to the religious orders of the country.

One decree has for its object the abolition of all convents and monasteries and the confiscation of the property; the other prohibits the priests from wearing their clerical dress in the streets.

Both decrees have been executed with military promptness and rigor. The nuns are now guests in the houses of their friends. Among them is an American lady, the prioress of the convent of St. Teresa, to whom I have offered the hospitalities of the legation.

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I have, &c.,

GEO. WILLIAMSON.

No. 124.]

No. 101.

Mr. Williamson to Mr. Fish.

UNITED STATES LEGATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA,

Guatemala, March 26, 1874.

(Received April 28.)

SIR: I have the honor to report that reliable information has reached me of a recent attempt to overthrow the government of President Guardia of Costa Rica.

It seems to have been the renewal of a plan, formed during the ten days' administration of Gonzalez, in the latter part of November last. At that time it was frustrated by Guardia's suddenly re-assuming the executive power and gratifying some of the disaffected army officers by promotions.

The failure lately is attributed to the indiscretion or infidelity of one of the revolutionists. Whatever the cause, it is quite certain Guardia had sufficient notice to arrest the chief movers. The leading man, when called before the President and interrogated, "Who are your confederates?" is said to have replied, "All the honest people of Costa Rica."

I happen to know this unfortunate gentleman. He is a merchant by profession, and a man of large fortune, which he has used so advan tageously in travel that I found him one of the best-informed men I have met with in Central America. His name is Joaquin Fernandez. He has never been in political life, and is believed to be without aspirations.

It is said he assumed the organization of the revolution with the view of ridding Costa Rica of Guardia and his followers, and for the purpose of placing in the presidential chair Ex-President Castro.

Doubtless he will be shot. My information is that San José, Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela were all ripe for revolt against Guardia when the infidelity or indiscretion before mentioned occurred. The towns

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named embrace in their limits and vicinity almost one-half the popula tion of Costa Rica. Should there be a revolution, would it not be advisable for me not to recognize the new government until after a popular election? Guardia was elected, or passed through the forms of an election, and is therefore a constitutional officer. In this he differed from Arias of Honduras, who was not elected, but was acting provisionally, or, in our language, by revolutionary right.

I have, &c.,

No. 102.

GEO. WILLIAMSON.

No. 126.]

Mr. Williamson to Mr. Fish.

UNITED STATES LEGATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA, Guatemala, March 31, 1874. (Received May 13.) SIR: I have the honor to inclose you a translated copy of an address recently issued by President Gonzalez to the people of Central America. It is not as well translated as I should have wished, but about as well done as was possible with such a document.

In it the President gives what I understand to be a correct history of the faithlessness of Señor Arias, and the elevation of President Leiva to the Presidency of Honduras.

Those passages that are most important I have marked in the mar gin, but I beg to call your attention to the remarks on the identity of Central American interests, to be found on, pages 22, 23, 24, and 25. You will notice on page 28 he charges President Guardia, of Costa Rica, with being the protector of the Palacios expedition.

It is altogether so remarkable a document that it seemed to be my duty to send it to you.

I have, &c.,

GEO. WILLIAMSON.

[Inclosure.-Translation.]

Address of President Gonzalez, of Salvador.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: In the presence of the grave events which have transpired in the republic of Honduras, I ought not to persist in absolute silence.

A soldier of the republican cause, a citizen of a democratic country, and the magistrate of a free people, I fulfill at this time the pleasing task of speaking with my natural frankness, for the purpose of making perfectly clear the policy of the government over which I preside, as far as it has relation to the liberty and peace of Central America.

Under existing circumstances, and recognizing the supremacy of the rights of the people, I do not fear to express the ideas and sentiments with which I am inspired, deciding me to act as the first responsible functionary of my country.

I do not fear to tell the direction which I give to her institutions, and the projects which I entertain with the expectation that they may be realities of the future, for thongh I respect I do not dread the judgment of my cotemporaries, and I await with confidence the decision of posterity, which knows how to do justice to the conduct of public men.

These convictions strengthen me to explain to the inhabitants of Salvador, to other Central Americans, and to the men of every clime who may give us their attention, why and for what purpose the sovereign power of this republic, symbolized by her flag and by her arms, has been in action on the fields of Honduras. What has just occurred there is a necessary consequence of antecedents which I am now going to

recall in order to present in full light a situation which those who have not been able to penetrate its depth behold as gloomy, and which they who wish to obscure the truth (which shines in deeds, in order to dazzle its adversaries) represent as gloomy and sad, with the view of making execrable the objects of their venom, to open slowly a subterranean road to re-action. Placed here in Salvador, in the difficult position of an armed representative of a revolution which, since 1871, has been reproducing the opinions and inclinations, the promises and hopes, which animated the founders of the independence of the republic, I have not been able to regard as a fallacious illusion, as a beautiful chimera, as a seductive falsehood, the programme of the patriots who pronounce the word "liberty" in order to fashion a labarum, under whose folds should rise the nations which lie in immobility and in silence under the load of slavery. From the bottom of my heart I have always rendered ardent veneration to human rights, and the grand beings who have consecrated it by heroic sacrifices, with the examples and teachings of regenerated republicanism. I have always had, and have still, in all of its integrity, a profound faith in the redemption of the people oppressed by errors and prejudices which are nourished by the enslavers of mankind.

I have had, in like mauner, and have still, a great confidence that truth shall pass before falsehood, justice before iniquity, and civilization before barbarism, in the interminable road of progress.

With this constant disposition of my moral nature, I have abandoned in a solemn moment the sanctuary of my family and the costly fruit of the long and painful labors of my life, in order to seek a tomb for my country, or a laurel, whose shade the transformed people of Salvador might hail. I had the fortune to obtain the last, and since then an exalted sentiment of my heart has bound me with much more force to the principles which I profess as to men, whatsoever may be their merits, the gratitude which may be due to them, and the rank which may be accorded them in the public estination.

By the strengthening and practice of these principles I have drawn down the wrath of a prolonged revolutionary tempest and the thunderbolt of civil death upon my head. I have renounced that easily-gotten popularity which those who court public opinion obtain by unlawful transactions and personal complaisance, which sacrifice the common interest to private and bring in subjection to passion the rectitude of conscience and the ascendency of ideas.

Fellow-citizens: For the ephemeral gratification of occupying the first post of command in Salvador, for the fleeting glories of power, I could not have contemplated the bloodshed of the people, have compromised my existence, and cast my name in the field of human conflicts, where reputations fall and rise, with no other reason than the eaprice or expediency of the moment, where passion adores and forsakes its idol in a day.

Making sacrifices which I should not overestimate, I have procured the complete termination of a revolution which, by its vigor, by its date, by its internal and essential relations, and by the changes it has brought, has a character purely Central American, and an exalted mission to accomplish, opposite to the most absolute reactionary movement for a long time incarnate in these five states, in these five members of the family, which was born in one common place, and for which there is but one fate; nor should it have but one thought and one head.

That inclination, that mission of the innovating movement of which I speak, has caused to yield those who have not conformed to it by just consequence.

It is for that reason, that when General Medina, who was President of Honduras, wished to hinder and abandon the work in which he had taken part, in order to preserve his power from a dangerous ene ny, he fell a victim like many others to his want of faith in the cause of liberty which he had just invoked, for it is impossible to turn at will the inexorable logic of human things.

You know very well, fellow-citizens, that in the memorable year 1871 was proclaimed here, after a prolonged repression, the exercise of the original rights of man, beginning an era for expansion of ideas and sentiments hidden in the breasts and in the minds of a society made dumb by terror.

In that period of activity and of political fever, a few Hondurans, who were suffering here the lingering sorrows of exile from their home on account of a discretional government, which was intolerable to them, raised their voices in tones of complaint, of lamentation, of protest, and of anethema, in order to make known the griefs and the sufferings of Honduras, to ask compassion and assistance from their brethren, to paint with lively colors the misconduct of a ruler, converted at his pleasure into a sovereign, into the all-powerful arbitrator of a people which has such glorious traditions, and has given such splendid figures to letters and to liberty.

General Medina wished to condemn me for the immediate effect of the principles proclaimed attributing to my changeableness in our personal relations that which was the spontaneous birth of the democratic doctrines in application.

The lamentable blindness of this most personal of politicians made imminen*, made

nnavoidable, made a reality, war between two administrations, which a short time before had hoisted the same standard in the sight of Central America.

The passion of my enemies has made them say, more than once, that I have been ungrateful to the former President to whom I refer. They pitifully confound that which he did for his own preservation, and the noble sacrifices which the generous Honduran population dedicated to the liberty of Salvador, with the private benefits which I should have acknowledged in my simple condition of man, if I would have received

any.

If General Medina has compelled in any way my gratitude in public life, I have had to be ungrateful to him in order to be grateful to this people and to the Hondurans, and consequently to the principles, in which I have made a very sincere and very high profession of faith.

When the cabinet of Comayagua condemned the use which was here made of the public liberties, as they formed the safeguards of Honduras, it committed a grave of fense against this republic, and against the unfortunate sister who so many times has poured out her blood for the practice of those same liberties, notwithstanding it was from her bosom, and attacking objects to me so sacred. That cabinet also attacked the democratic institutions, which, as I have already said, are of much more value, in my judgment, than the most conspicuous and extraordinary man in the world.

In consequence of this I was led to the direful extremity of war, which was declared against Salvador, and which I accepted without irresolution, in order to discharge with firmness my duty as a soldier and as a President.

In the supreme hour of this crisis to which I am referring, in the beginning of the struggle undertaken from the motives which I have already assigned, when the fate of all these people hung upon the hazard of a conflict, the licentiate Don Celeo Arias presented himself in this capital, not as a proscribed person, or an emigrant revolutionist for the redemption of his country, but as a man ready to enter the most favorable current of events.

Señor Arias had not the good fortune to consecrate to the assistance of Honduras the sacrifice of a dear interest, the effective work of a patriot in action, or useful or generous thought for the press, and notwithstanding this, he was appointed from this place to succeed General Medina in the chief magistracy, which at that time was

vacant.

And Señor Arias was appointed for such purpose by some of his fellow-countrymen. who at that period represented in this place Honduran patriotism, for I invited them to select a person who, transitorily, might be as a national type as a representative of the opinion which was agitated by the neighboring people on the occasion of the change of the personnel of the government.

I knew very well that a few persons, though they may be important ones, cannot constitute the autonomy of an independent state, and thas, consequently, the election of Señor Arias for provisional President of Honduras, made in Salvador by a small minority of that country, is a political step which was taken very far from the will of the people, which democratic revolutions require for their legitimacy and justification.

But, under the circumstances to which I refer, no other thing could be done. I did not wish to go to battle against the new chief of the reaction, presenting myself in the field as a conqueror who proposes to make his will felt over the destinies of a people. I did not wish-I did not even think-to give this or that chief to the Honduranian society, but I judged then, and I think still, that the authors of the first act of the drama in which Señor Arias suddenly appears with applause, on account of the nationality to which they belong, on account of their political and civil condition, and the ideas which they sustained to the end, could very well, if not found a provisional government, clothed in competent authority, serve as a guarantee, and a homogeneous element, so that the majority of their fellow-citizens could give it their support and full assent.

The principal actors of that episode of the drama which is still being unfolded know perfectly well that I tell the truth without coloring or alteration. I tell it clearly and fully, for it so comports with my dignity and character. Thus it accords with history, thus it is necessary for me, in order to demonstrate my fidelity to the doctrines which I proclaim, and to make plain in relief, and not as a sketch, the firmness with which I have proposed to proceed in the high office which I occupy.

For the motives and under the auspices which I have expressed, the war of 1872 was entered into, Señor Arias being carried under the protection of the Salvadoran files, to the end that he should be proclaimed provisional President of his country, and that he might make a call upon the national opinion in order to proclaim the foundations of peace and of law, driven from the Honduran borders.

As a guarantee that to this alone his endeavors were directed, this same Señor Arias pledged himself to me in the city of Gracias to procure quickly the reconstruction of the republic, and to give all of his moral support to the candidacy of Señor Don Ponciano Leiva, who for some time past enjoyed in his country more popularity than any other public man.

That promise was not fulfilled, not even in appearance, and I wished to conceal such a grave fault, banishing it to silence for the sake of concord and peace.

The troops of this republic conquered in all the combats in which they engaged, removed the Medina administration, giving its situation to the one which came to replace it, with a programme of solutions and reforms in favor of liberty.

That field happily crowned by us, our valiant and honorable struggles did not leave in their passage gibbets raised by them in order to sacrifice patriots, spoliations and taunts perpetrated in the abuse of strength; they did not return to their point of departure carrying booty, as those who conquer do in all the world; they were not an onerous tax, oppressive, unjust clauses to the government of Señor Arias, which remained established in Comayagua without any danger, and founded with absolute independence by those who by their heroism carried him from the camp to the throne. That work concluded by the valiant and opportune aid of the government of Guatemala, Honduras has seen that the external troops, who overthrew the tyranny which overwhelmed her, did not remain as the invading troops of another time, a open furrow in the heart, and the seed of discord sown by violence.

In a contrary sense, the aid dispensed to a government which was proclaimed without affront or resistance, for the country which saw it appear as a great promise of justice and reparation, made to palpitate a sentiment of brotherhood in the liberal hearts of those people, united by nature and by common sacrifices, and there remained established the most perfect political consolidation of the cabinets charged with the relieving of their destinies.

This consolidation, this close alliance, is the expression of a fundamental and unalienable truth, which rules the interior life of Central America, whose organic unity, the artificial separation of her members, her badly-understood interests, and the passions engaged in pursuing a like absurdity, have not been able to destroy.

The experience of the events place at each step, in evidence, that truth which we forget from seeing isolated parts, instead of studying the intimate relations which

bind the whole.

The filibuster takes a port on the shores of Nicaragua, and Central America puts herself in motion, and rushes united to combat in defense of her independence and her privileges as attributes of one people threatened with conquest and usurpation. One government falls, and another rises in the morning or in the evening, and the occurrence holds its place through the action of a neighboring power, which has given its support and its resources to the triumphant opposition.

Such a political phenomenon has its cause, or its reason, in the identity of aims of sentiments, and of interests which exist between the liberals on one side, and on the other between the reactionists in all of this central part of the American continent.

A revolution or intestine war bursts out in any of our republics, and the Central American people is disturbed, as the human organism is disturbed when one of its sensitive nerves is affected or one of its arteries is wounded. This incontrovertible fact, proved by the history of our life of independence, causes the general principles of publie right to suffer here profound modifications in their application in obedience to what might be termed the peculiar and exceptional polities of Central America.

If to this consideration is added the circumstance that the government of Señor Arias was established in consequence of the success obtained in Honduras by the united arms of Salvador and Guatemala, the intervention of the allies remains fully justified, so far as it has relation to fighting a common enemy, and to procuring the security and the unfolding of the politics which they sustain.

Short of this transcendental point, the administration with which I occupy myself has had the most complete liberty of action during the twenty months of its existence. Established in a dictatorship from its commencement, it has exercised its power at discretion and absolutely, employing harsh measures, condemned with bitterness by the most distinguished Hondurans, because, before the filibustering expedition of Señor Palacios they had not had in their country either wars, rebellions, or tumultnous crowds of such magnitude as might make necessary the prolongation of that dangerous form of government beheld with repugnance or distrust by the liberals of the monarchical system and of modern republicanism.

The long duration of such a rule gave occasion to many and very conspicuous countrymen of Senor Arias to address themselves privately to me, informing me that he defranded the faith and hopes of the liberals, that his conduct contradicted his words, and that the means of his power being weakened by this he would very soon be without strength to resist the sudden energetic attacks of the reactionists and to stifle any unforeseen movement of the demagogues.

I heard with composure any such insinuations, trusting that in spite of such an anomalous situation, the society of Honduras would at last legally establish their government. Bat, nevertheless, I did not confine myself to an attitude of expectancy, since at different periods I have sent out from this republic six expeditions, with the object of putting down insurrectionary movements which threatened the existence of the government to which I allude.