He detested "pure politics"; he regarded the Constitution as a "dead letter in national life." His vocation impelled him to protect the financial affairs of the country; he was Minister of Finance from 1866 to 1868, fiscal agent in London, and founded a bank in Lima. His best address deals with the subject of taxation. As President he decreed a monopoly of saltpetre in 1875, an economic measure often criticised as having provoked the disastrous war with Chili. An economist and champion of order, he continued the work of Castilla, was triumphant over revolution, and organised the country. In 1862, when he had already been minister and mayor of Lima, a popular election carried him to power. In four years his extraordinary activity reformed all the public services: education, finance, and immigration. He ordered the census to be taken in 1876; he endeavoured to attract foreigners; founded the Faculty of Political Sciences and the {118} University of Lima for the education of diplomatists and administrators, and the School of Arts and Crafts for the improvement of popular education; he opened new primary schools, sent for German and Polish professors, and entrusted the pedagogic direction of the country to them. He promulgated new regulations dealing with education on the classic European lines. He re-established the National Guard, as Portales had done in Chili, and organised departmental _juntas_ with an eye to decentralisation. His action was restless and universal. He preferred a positive policy, devoid of doctrinaire quarrels, dreamed of a practical republic, like Rafael Nuñez in Colombia and Guzman-Blanco in Venezuela, and preferred the faculty of political sciences, which formed administrators, to that of letters, which created literary men and philosophers. Nevertheless, the country became bankrupt. Loans, the great undertakings of President Balta, and speculations in guano and saltpetre had exhausted it. Pardo could not prevent this financial disaster. He assured the service of the foreign debt and informed the democracy, intoxicated by the economic orgy, that it was ruined. He vainly sought the alliance of the Argentine and Bolivia in order to erect a triple bastion of defence against the ambitions of Chili. His efforts were fruitless, both at home and abroad. He was succeeded by a military President. The alliance of Peru and Bolivia was powerless against the might of Chili, and Pardo himself was assassinated during a supreme reaction of the demagogy which he hoped to rule. [Illustration: MANUEL PARDO. President of Peru (1872-1876). To face p. 118.]