Three centuries of abasement had been a most inopportune school for the freedom of a republic, and one cannot be surprised that the change was no easy one, or that the results have not, even after two generations, been all that the patriots among these first rebels may have wished. Subjectively, “Be thou fed” is very easy; but objectively the result seldom meets the command. Slavery was abolished forty years before the great Republic of the North dared to do that right; but this eminently proper step was very embarrassing, for not only were there no means left for the forced repair of roads, bridges, and other means of intercourse, that in a tropical country need constant vigilance, but the commerce between town and town fell off, and the little traffic that had led a struggling existence for some years with Spain and other European countries now died out entirely, and the revenues of the State were affected with an atrophy that crippled every attempt of the Government to improve the internal communications of the country. The clergy, who had perhaps made the freest use of forced labor, in covering the land with elaborate churches and convents that all the revenues of the Government of the present day could hardly keep in repair, felt aggrieved and uneasy. All was in transition, and there were few wise men to guide the counsels. The stream was turbulent, and not easily kept within its proper channel. Is it wonderful that round blocks should be found in square holes under such circumstances; or that the political equilibrium, all unstable, should turn to this signal disturbance or that, without much reason?