In the following December, the endeavor seemed promising; for the American Minister to Colombia was able to report the signing, at Bogota, of a protocol, preparatory to a new treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, to be concluded at Caracas. Four months later, on the 27th of April, 1906, Minister Russell, at Caracas, announced the arrival there of the Colombian plenipotentiary, General Benjamin Herrera, appointed for the negotiation of the treaty agreed upon, but reported further that the Venezuelan Government had refused to receive him, demanding that somebody else be sent. No settlement of the matter could be obtained while Castro controlled Venezuela. Since his elimination it has been reported that President Gomez, his successor, has annulled his decrees of hostility to Colombian commerce. COLUMBIA: A. D. 1906-1909. Efficient but arbitrary Government produces discontent. Opposition to treaty with Panama and the United States. Vacation of President Reyes which ends in resignation. Revolt. Elections. While the Government organized under President Reyes was undoubtedly efficient and effective in restoring order and prosperity to the country, it was not satisfactory to the people; and perhaps it speaks well for them that they showed discontent. It was not a representative government, the existing Congress not being an elective body, but a provisional legislature made up by appointment. As admitted in the quotation above from a friendly Colombian writer, the citizens under it were tongue-tied subjects, having no free speech or Press. The political situation and the differing states of feeling produced by it were discussed in April, 1909, by a special correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who wrote from Bogotá: "It seems to be confessed by the great majority of the people here that the country has not entered on that stage of political development in which the people can govern themselves by parliamentary methods. The history of their nearly one hundred years of independent national life has been that of almost continual civil strife, and of frequent civil wars, which have interrupted and almost destroyed all efforts at self-government; so that the present system of government by executive decrees, to be ratified by an appointed ‘Constitutional and Legislative Assembly,’ is about the only one that can preserve the peace and direct the country into the line of prosperity and progress. {112}