All the principles of advanced democratic government were included in the programme of the party which ruled Columbia from 1863 to 1883, and the statute books of the time afford ample proof that the leaders earnestly tried to put those principles into practical effect. They dreamed a Utopia, but practically their efforts only aggravated the anarchical tendencies bequeathed by the Spaniards and Bolivar. Colombian liberals still insist that a persistent enforcement of the Constitution and principles of 1863 would ultimately transform the character of the people--that religious bigotry and priestly influence would gradually disappear; that the progressive enlightenment of the masses would make military despotism and revolutions impossible; and that in process of time the relations of the states to the federal government would reach a satisfactory and workable basis. But so far as the experiment went no progress was made toward unifying the nation and pacifying the adverse elements. Discontent, disorders, civil wars increased in violence as the years went by. Though one-fifth of the federal revenues were spent on the public school system, and one-tenth of the children were nominal attendants, the clergy were permitted to have no share in their control, and retaliated by excommunicating the parents. The devotedly pious Creole mothers and wives, threatened with the closing of the confessionals and the denial of absolution, threw their incalculable influence against the atheistic government. The destruction of the convents and the confiscation of the vast ecclesiastical estates violently changed the ownership of two-thirds of the land in the confederation, but this imposition of new landlords on the industrious, oppressed, half-enslaved tenantry did not much modify real agricultural conditions. No extensive subdivision of estates resulted, and the Creole aristocracy continued to pay more attention to political intrigue than to improving their property. [Illustration: VIEW OF PANAMA.] Not less disappointing in its practical working was the independence of the states. Not only did the local bosses constantly abuse autonomy for their own selfish purposes, but the presidents at Bogota often ignored the constitutional rights of the states, and selected for coercion precisely those states which were farthest from the capital and most needed wide autonomous powers. Though Panama's position was isolated, its population cosmopolitan, its commercial interests and social structure peculiar, and though in colonial times its dependence on Bogota had been only nominal, the liberal presidents usually ruled it like a conquered province. Members of the Andean oligarchy poured in to batten on its revenues; the autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution proved illusory, and discontent led to repeated efforts to achieve absolute independence.