Guano, Nitrate, and Railways being recognised as the prime sources of Peruvian greatness, and these having been noticed with no scant justice, another matter remains for examination, which may be said to surpass all the others in importance, albeit it is not so easy to estimate or understand.

Granted that Peru has all the physical elements of a great nation,—such as gold and silver, copper and iron, and coal, oil and wine, a vast line of sea-coast with numerous safe bays and ports, rivers for internal navigation, as well as railroads,—has she the moral qualities to develop these riches and make the best use of them? In plain words, has Peru ceased to be a hotbed of revolution? is there any hope that the ruling classes of the Peruvian people will become sober, industrious, thrifty, honest, just and right in all their dealings, and cease to be a source of anxiety and disgust to their present and future creditors?

These may be said to be momentous questions, and not to be lightly answered. Any answer not founded on well-ascertained facts and indisputable knowledge should be set aside as vexatious and frivolous. A hasty answer, or one founded on aught else, could only be conceived in malice or prompted by motives of self-interest. It has, for example, during the past few months been comparatively easy to a portion of the London press to defame the character of Peru; to find reasons why its bonds should be held only as waste paper, and even to prove to the satisfaction of its fond and eager readers that she is in an utterly bankrupt state. The same accomplished writers, if it suited their purpose, could as easily prove, with their eloquent persuasiveness, that Peru after all is, in commercial phraseology, sound; she had never yet failed in keeping faith with her English friends, and is too enlightened to think of doing so now. True, she is in debt; but she can pay handsomely, and, in the powerful rhetoric of Bassanio, would encourage money-lenders and her private friends thus:—

But not thus will our serious questions meet with satisfactory answers.

The first thing to be noted in the enquiry, perhaps, is that it is altogether a misnomer to call Peru a Republic. Whatever else it be, a Republic it certainly is not, and never has been a Republic. Its political constitution and its laws have nothing whatever to do with the people, nor have the people aught to do with them; and they care for them as they care for the theory of gravitation, or any other portion of demonstrable knowledge, from which they may indeed derive some animal comfort in its application, but the application of which will probably never enlighten their souls. The people of Peru know as much of liberty as they know of the Virgin Mary. The priests once or twice a year dress the image of the Jewish maiden in tawdry attire, put a tinsel crown on her head, and call her the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven, and the people fall down and worship; which they are perfectly at liberty to do, as the impostors who lead them to do so may get their living in that way, as all other impostors obtain theirs who possess the people's grace. In like fashion, all that the people know of liberty they know thus. They know as much of it as an aristocrat cares to teach them—as a quack can tell his patient of medicine, or the showy proprietress of a showy school can teach an intelligent girl the use of the globes. All native-born Peruvians of full age have votes, at least all such as can read and write, or possess a certain amount of real property. But reading and writing are not by any means universal accomplishments in the Peruvian Republic, and there are fewer holders of real estate among the working classes than maybe found in Barbados among the coloured labourers of that beautiful but misgoverned island.

Don Juan Espinosa, an old Peruvian soldier, and one of the few South American writers whose literary works have been translated into French, if not also into English, wrote some twenty years ago a republican, democratic, moral, political, and philosophical dictionary for the people. Strange to say, he has given us no definition of a Republic in his highly-entertaining and instructive book. Two of his longest articles, however, are devoted, the first to the subject of 'Independence,' and the second to 'Revolution.' The manner in which the author concludes the first is suggestive: 'On one day,' he says, 'we were all brothers and countrymen; brothers by blood, and countrymen of a land which we had just irrigated with our blood. O day immortal for humanity! On this day the Saviour of the world beheld the consummation of his work; he saw the spectacle which years before had led the way for 1824. He without doubt designed the camp of Ayacucho as the first embrace of all the races, and the signal also for the suppression of all human rivalries. Afterwards'

A long, broad black line stretches across the page as if to put it in mourning.

'A revolution in substance,' he says, 'is nothing more than the organisation of a people's discontent.'

If that be so, there has never been a revolution in Peru; a statement which will be doubted by nearly all who hear it for the first time. We may perhaps make an exception in the revolution which made Col. Prado dictator of Peru in November, 1865. No doubt the enthusiasm of the Peruvian people for going to war with Spain was genuine, and Prado, not at all a man of revolutionary tastes, easily overthrew Canseco, because of his Spanish tendencies. Prado was subsequently elected President in 1867, but was overthrown by Balta and Canseco the year following, and Colonel (now General) Prado fled to Chile for his life. Still, let us be thankful that we can find one authentic instance of Peruvian patriotism in the course of fifty years, and that out of the hundreds of revolutions which have occurred, one was for the good of the country—and most certainly to its honour.

The anniversary of the 2nd of May, 1866, is kept with pride by every loyal Peruvian in all parts of the world, wherever one may find himself. Had there been among the Peruvian soldiers on that day as much knowledge of gunnery as there was of personal valour, not more than one or two ships of the Spanish fleet which bombarded Callao had escaped destruction.

It has been contended by a few anxious Peruvians that the revolution made by General Castilla, in 1854, against General Echenique was also a popular revolution. Perhaps it was. Echenique was notoriously very fond of money, and it is said that so freely did he help himself to the proceeds of the public guano that the people rose against him, flocked to the standard of Castilla, whom they kept in power for twelve years, and sent Echenique into ignoble exile. If that could be proved in favour of the Peruvian people, it should be done at once. But no one from sheer laughter can discuss the question. Castilla was as fond of money as Echenique; Castilla, however, did one or two liberal things; he liberated the slaves, and abolished the poll-tax, and in that sense the revolution of 1854 may be said to have been a popular one.

No Peruvian who supported those two famous acts of General Castilla's Government looks back upon them with anything but bitter regret. The negro slaves were well off—they were, moreover, a people with much affection for their masters, and slavery existed only in name. When the blacks, however, were 'liberated,' they became like a mob of mules without burdens, without guide or master, and they wandered about the earth and died miserably. Those who survived were certainly very little credit to their friends, for many of them became the terror of the highways which converge on the capital of the Republic.

The Indians who paid the poll-tax did then do some work, and they were made to feel some of the responsibilities of being republicans—they were kept under rule—they could be induced to labour in 'some of the richest silver mines in the world.' Now they will do nothing of the kind, and the Government has not only lost an income of 2,000,000 dols. a year, they have lost the services of the entire indigenous population, which may be called, in classical language, a pretty kettle of fish, especially for a country whose riches depend upon the industry of a free and happy people.

One immediate consequence of Castilla's emancipation policy was that it speedily became a profitable business for a few adventurous persons in Lima to proceed to China, where they kidnapped some of the superfluous Chinese population. This traffic prospered for a while, but as it is the property of murder to make itself known—somehow or anyhow—the profits fell off, owing to the interference of one or two civilised Governments. When the Celestial Empire no longer offered a safe field for the Peruvian men-snatchers, attempts were made on the inoffensive people of the diocese of modern evangelisation, and in the course of time the rich people of Lima had the opportunity of buying a few men, women, and girls, who had been stolen from some of the islands of the Pacific. But these for some mysterious reasons died off, after having cost the Peruvian Government a serious sum of money, and some people their reputation. It was, however, imperatively necessary, owing to the demands of the British farmer for guano, and the exigences of the Government of Peru to obtain men from China somehow for the important work of shovelling Peruvian dung into European ships; and there may be reckoned to-day among the motley population of the Republic not less than 60,000 men who cultivate sugar and pig-tails, and indulge in opium. This, therefore, might be called a popular revolution, and the friends of General Castilla can claim for him the honour and glory of having brought it about.

General Castilla deserves to be better known; but this is not the place to speak of him at any length. He introduced a new era into Peruvian politics—he was the first native Peruvian with no Spanish blood in his veins who assumed supreme power. If there had been no guano to demoralise everybody, himself included, Castilla might have become a great man, and the Peruvian people been lifted up by him in the scale of humanity. As it is, Castilla and everybody else fulfilled the prediction of the Hebrew prophet in a manner that might be stated in Spanish, but which no gentleman can write in English. It should be stated that although Castilla had nothing of Spanish blood in his veins, yet his father was an Italian, and his mother one of the pure Indian women of Moquegua.

All this, however, does not help us to answer the momentous questions with which this chapter opens.—If Peru is not a Republic, and there have not been more than two revolutions in the whole of its wild and chequered history, what is it?

Peru is a Republic in name, 'governed' or rather farmed by groups or families of despots, who frequently quarrel among themselves, cut each other's throats, and alternately embrace and kiss each other, in a manner that is sickening to any one who is not a moral eunuch[14]. Only those who are rich enough to escape to Chile are saved from the above gentle process. General Prado is one of these favoured Peruvians. Had not Don Manuel Pardo, the late President, fled from Lima during the revolting days of the Gutierrez terror, he too would have gone the way of all flesh and Peruvian political farmers.

The people of Peru, those who are to be distinguished from the families who farm them, are hard-working, industrious, sober, ignorant, excitable and superstitious. They are fond of serving their masters, they like to be called 'children' by the great Colonels, the great sugar-boilers, and all who ride on horses and live, even though it be at other people's expense, in great houses.

The Peruvian dictionary already quoted from, though it does not contain the word Republic, does contain the history of Peru. Let us turn to the article 'Liberty.'

'La libertad,' says our brave soldier author, 'does not consist, civilly or socially speaking, in each one doing what he likes. By thus understanding liberty some governments have fallen, and some people have lost what they had gained.

'Liberty consists in each one having the power to do, at all events, that which the law has not forbidden, in not damaging another in his rights, or property, or in his moral and material well-being.

'That society is not free while any of its members are unable to express their thoughts without hinderance.

'That society is not free when one or more of its industries are prohibited under the pretext of monopoly or privilege.

'It is not free when it cares not, or is unable to arraign a lying magistrate.

'That society is not free which does not possess political morality. This consists in—

'I. Keeping the treaties and covenants made with other nations.

'II. In submitting to the law without its ever supposing itself entitled to falsify it by cunning arts, or paltry subterfuge.

'III. In holding up to scorn whatever crime affects the national honour.

'IV. In not corrupting its institutions for personal considerations. A people will find it very difficult to maintain its freedom, which is without sufficient spirit to provide itself with good institutions, and afterwards ready to put so much faith in them, that it will become a religious duty rigorously to support them.

'By what right does Spanish-America call itself republican, if it has not renounced the custom of a despotic monarchical absolutism?

'These unhappy people have given themselves very liberal laws, and have afterwards abandoned them at the caprice of men without having the least faith in their own institutions.

'How can they thus hope to be free?

'It costs nothing, nor is it of any value to shout Liberty, Liberty. But that which is of great price, and can never be too costly, is to acquire liberty by means of good manners, by the custom of respecting the law and making it respected, by respecting the rights of others, and making them respected by all; to be just with all the world, and ashamed of every evil act. Behold, how liberty is to be acquired. In fine, liberty is the health of the soul, and he cannot be free who has not a healthy conscience.'

'The greater number of our liberals,' he adds in another place, with one of his happiest flashes of poetic truth, of which the book is full, 'the greater number of our liberals are like musical instruments which do not retain the sound they give when played upon,' i. e. they are cracked.

Let it be added, that this soldier of the sword and of the pen who fought and bled on the field of battle for Peruvian civil liberty, and sighed, and cried in peaceful days for a freedom still greater and better, died poor and neglected. The present Peruvian Government sought all over Lima for complete copies of his works to send to Philadelphia, but it allows those whom he has left behind him, and who bear his name, to languish in obscurity and in want; and Don Manuel Pardo and his ministers, good in many things though they may be, are in others nothing better than cracked musical instruments. Peru is only a Republic in name, liberty does not exist, its people are not free, and the country remains at the mercy of men who at any moment, and in the most unexpected manner, can turn it into a hotbed of what is called revolution.

A revolution is expected now. The man whose administration designed and carried through one of the 'railways of the age,' the personal friend of Meiggs, who had taken anarchy captive in an iron net, was shortly afterwards in the most cowardly, brutal, and unexpected way first made prisoner, while he was yet President, and then murdered in his jail.

Great as is the love of the common people for their superiors, they are not to be relied upon in days of great excitement, and when there is abundance of loose change flying about. How could it be otherwise?

How often do ministers and public men meet the people in common? Never, except in a religious procession carrying an enormous wax candle a yard long, and as thick as a rolling-pin, or at the Theatre on el dos de Mayo, and not then unless there has been some pleasant news announced the day before.

How often are the people enlightened by a clear and straightforward statement of the public accounts? Never. Does not the free press of Lima support the Government, or now and then criticise its acts in the interest of the people? The answer is that there is no free press in Lima.

No plan of the Government is ever made known until it has been accomplished. Everything is done in secret and underground. Rumour is the great agent of the Government and mystery its chief force. So mysterious are the ways of the Executive that itself is not unfrequently a mystery to itself. No Peruvian Government has ever had the courage to take the people into its confidence, and the people are too busy with their own personal affairs to think of, much less to resent, the slight.

In other matters the press is busy enough. Some of the most biting criticisms on priests, on auricular confession, on the infallibility of the Pope and the Immaculate Conception have appeared in the Lima press. Their teachers, in brief, have ridiculed the gods of the people and given them none to adore. No intellectual society in Lima associate with priests. No priest is ever seen in the houses of the rich, or the respectable poor.

Freemasonry is the fashionable religion of men, and men who never go to mass will frequent a lodge twice a week. Only the other day one of these lodges published an advertisement in the leading journal to the effect that a gold medal would be conferred on any brother mason who would adopt the orphan child of any who had died fighting against any form of tyranny, and the medal is to be worn as a badge of honour on the person of the owner. Freemasonry in Peru is an open menace of the Church, which with all deference to the craft, may be called a gross mistake. But Peruvian Freemasonry is like Peruvian Republicanism, chiefly a thing of show, and something to talk about by men who can talk of nothing else.

After all this it should not be difficult to answer the questions with which this chapter opens.

But lest it should be thought that the greater part of these statements is pure rhetoric, or mere private opinion, and not stubborn facts, let us now ask two questions more.

What use has Peru made of the great income it has derived during the past generation, from the national guano? What is there to show for the many million pounds sterling it has derived from this source, and from money lent by English bondholders?

Let us hasten at once to acknowledge that it has spent 150,000,000 dols. in railways. But let us also add that the greatest authority in Peru has stigmatised these railways as locuras, or follies. This is not an encouraging beginning. But alas it is not only the beginning, it is also the end of the account.

There is nothing else to be seen. There is not a single lighthouse or light on any dangerous rock, or at any port difficult to make along the whole of its coast. All the fructifying rivers of the hills still steal into the sea. Had half the money which has been spent on the Oroya railway been expended on works of irrigation, the Government of Peru would now be in the possession of a respectable revenue.

A morning visit to the market-place in Lima on any day of the week, is enough to convince even a Peruvian President who knows something else besides how to play rocambor, of the truth of this statement.

Internal roads, excepting these 'railways of the age,' there are none; but there are several ironclads and men-of-war in the Bay of Callao, for what use or of what service the First Lord of the Admiralty himself could not tell explicitly.

It might be thought by some ordinary people, of business habits and a little reflection, that a country like Peru, which can boast of as many seaports as it can of first-class towns and cities, would provide those ports with convenient landing-places, moles, or piers.

There is one good pier on the whole coast, which in its useless grandeur stretches out nearly a mile into the sea; as the Oroya railway, like a mighty python, creeps up the precipitous slopes of the Andes 'sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.'

As every one knows, the Pacific is a peaceful sea, as quiet as a saucer of milk. But like almost all the things that every one knows, this piece of knowledge will hardly bear the test of experience. Twenty miles or less from its shore, the Pacific on the Peruvian coast, may be said to be as calm and placid as a man's unresisted vices. Put a restraint upon, or raise a barrier against the most modest of the man's wishes, and these suddenly show their strength, even the strength, as some have found to their cost, of resistless passion. It is thus with this Pacific sea. When it comes against a rocky shore, or the miserable wooden barriers which the Peruvian Government have put up for the convenience and comfort of passengers, and the despatch of business, it becomes more like a wild beast, or a watery volcano, or any other fierce and angry force which cannot by ordinary means be restrained. It is not unlikely that a Government fond of providing cheap distraction for the people has purposely neglected this useful work of building piers, with the benevolent design of providing a cheap amusement to those inhabitants of the ports who do not travel by sea.

It is such fun to see a lady dressed in pink satin and blue silk boots get a sudden ducking in salt water, or to watch in safety from the shore a boat full of anxious and highly dressed colonels and sugar-boilers, editors and lawyers, get drenched to the skin, and almost robbed of their breath, in trying to effect a landing at Islay, or Mollendo, Iquique, or Chala, or even Callao.

If any of the readers of this brief but eventful history would desire to see the Peruvian Republic as in a microcosm, let them arrive at the latter chief port of the nation in a steamer, or a cattle ship, as a passenger steamer may now be called. They will see an exhibition of confusion, extortion, bullying, insolence, cruelty, and official imbecility, which cannot be equalled in any other part of the civilised or uncivilised world, including New Guinea or Eragomanga. And as it is now, so it was twenty years ago. A steamer, the European mail for example, drops its anchor about two miles from the shore. It is then surrounded by a hundred small boats, each containing two, sometimes more, coloured men. The screaming, gesticulating, and brutal language of these creatures defy description. The authorities have no control over them, the captain of the steamer is powerless against the invasion of his ship, and all passengers who have no friends, who know nothing of the country and cannot speak Spanish, are placed at the mercy of this swarm of harpies.

Here you have an epitome of Peru. Gentlemen and rogues jostling one another in painful contiguity. Gentlewomen and their opposite, men who work and scoundrels who prey upon other people's labour, priests and colonels, knowledge and ignorance, in some form or other brought in violent collision: the utmost freedom of opinion and nobody to keep the peace!