A revolutionary society was formed in Quito whose ramifications extended among the enthusiastic youth in every part of the republic. In Guayaquil, the wealthiest and most commercial city, the demand for better financial administration became universal. In 1833 Vicente Rocafuerte, the foremost of Ecuadorean liberals and the most accomplished public man in the country, openly assumed the leadership of the opposition to Flores. Elected a member of congress he bravely defied the dictator, who sentenced him to banishment. But when he reached Guayaquil the troops and citizens of that city arose to support him. Flores led an army down the Andes and attacked and captured Guayaquil, Rocafuerte and his partisans escaped and kept up the struggle at different points of the coast, while sympathetic insurrections broke out on the plateau in Flores's rear. Though the dictator finally succeeded in capturing Rocafuerte, the only use he was able to make of his victory was to secure better terms from the liberals. Rocafuerte and he formed an alliance and together they pacified the country, the former becoming president and the latter retaining command of the army. Ecuador enjoyed her first real respite from civil war and tumult since 1809, and Rocafuerte's inauguration in 1835 marks the beginning of civil and constitutional government. CHAPTER V MODERN ECUADOR President Rocafuerte was not only animated by revolutionary principles, imbued with liberal ideas, and a student of the best political and economic writers, but he proved to be a good administrator--practical, cautious, and sure--and earned the title of the greatest of Ecuador's reformers. His first step was to summon a constituent assembly which divided the country into provinces and parishes, outlined a rational scheme of administration, and made a substantial beginning toward substituting civil for military government. Although he did not attempt to carry into practice the dreams of radical liberals--impracticable among a population nine-tenths Indians in semi-bondage, and in a country where the clergy were dominant--he reformed the taxing system, set in order the finances, so far as his means and knowledge would permit, earnestly encouraged industry, agriculture, and commerce, repaired and built roads, promulgated a new and humane criminal code, and established schools. He set up the pyramids of the French geographers, showing that tender regard for his country's repute abroad which is rarely absent in statesmen of high character and noble aims. Under his administration Ecuador assumed the payment of her proportion--twenty-one and a half per cent., or one million eight hundred thousand pounds--of the debt contracted by the defunct United States of Colombia during the war of independence. However, this debt proved a burden too great for her resources. Interest fell behind and the principal has been scaled down repeatedly. Only in 1900 was an arrangement satisfactory to the