The effect of such continuous commotion has been most disastrous to the country and the people at large. This is all the more saddening when it is considered that, less than ten per cent of the people took part in the disturbances. Revolutions, successful and unsuccessful, have been fought to a finish with less than a thousand men on either side. Ninety per cent of the population are law-abiding citizens who would like nothing better than to be let alone and permitted to pursue their vocations in peace. The other ten per cent were not entirely to blame: they have been the victims of their environment. Not only have the revolutionary disturbances caused enormous indirect loss to the country through paralyzation of agriculture, arrest of development and loss of credit, but they have also been a large direct expense. A considerable portion of every budget was devoted to appropriations for the purchase of war material and the maintenance of the military and naval establishment. When uprisings occurred the additional amounts necessary for their suppression have been taken from other appropriations, those for public works usually being the first to be cancelled. If the uprisings became serious the other appropriations of the budget were reduced by fifty or even seventy-five per cent until all the available cash was devoted to war purposes. In 1903 military and naval expenditures absorbed 71.7 per cent of the Republic's disbursements, and in 1904 72.6 per cent. At such times the government was reduced to a desperate struggle for existence; the loss of the custom-houses in power of the insurgents made its position still more precarious; it contracted loans on ruinous terms; it neglected its foreign obligations and paid its employees in promissory notes and even in postage stamps, which they would then peddle about the streets. Under such conditions it is natural that nothing was left for public improvements. Even under the peaceful administration of Heureaux a disproportionate part of the national funds was expended for military purposes and three gunboats were acquired and maintained, but not a single mile of improved road was laid out. With the American military occupation political conditions in the Dominican Republic have radically changed. The system of waging political campaigns by force of arms has stopped abruptly and absolutely. Revolutions have become a matter of history. Ballots will hereafter take the place of bullets, and politics will be conducted in the same manner as in other orderly countries. Evolution, not revolution, will be the characteristic of the future. CHAPTER XX LAW AND JUSTICE Audiencia of Santo Domingo.--Legal system.--Judicial organization.--Observance of laws.--Prisons.--Character of offenses.