Murillo was elected for a second term in 1872, and at once devoted himself, and with considerable success, to the re-organisation and regulation of the finances. The law of 1868, which had hypothecated the revenues to meet the charges of the public debt, was repealed and the foreign bonds were scaled down to less than one-third their face. By such measures the president succeeded in paying the government employees and taking care of pressing home necessities, and even showed a nominal surplus at the end of his term. During the administration of Santiago Perez (1874-76) the first mutterings of the terrible storm of civil war soon to burst over the country were heard. The state of Panama defied his authority and imprisoned his officers, but he applied conscientiously the constitutional doctrine of non-intervention, and disavowed a general who on his own responsibility had deposed the governor. The governor of the state of Magdalena took possession of the custom houses at the mouth of the river, and the troops of the state of Bolivar attacked federal detachments passing along the Magdalena--a river which is inter-state, and whose navigation was free by the terms of the Constitution. The popular election of 1875 was so disturbed that congress assumed the power of selecting a president, and Parra was installed the following spring. An internecine conflict broke out in Cauca; the president started to intervene, and the states of Antioquia and Tolima declared war against him. Although guerilla bands in Cundinamarca, Boyaca, and Santander menaced the government's rear, twenty-five thousand recruits were raised and sent against the rebelling states. Antioquia was beaten at Chancos and Garrapata, and the rebels of central Colombia at La Donjuana, in battles where the largest numbers of soldiers ever gathered on Colombian soil were engaged. [Illustration: RAFAEL NUNEZ, PRESIDENT OF COLOMBIA IN 1879-1883, 1885-1891.]