against his authority, he stepped forward to confront them, and, with deliberation and calmness, tore from his person his insignia of office, he knew that his deed had been echoed through the whole length of Chile, and that it had caused a shock of astonishment and sympathy in the breasts of even those most strenuously opposed to his policy.  In other respects the results were much the same as in the case of Bolivar.  The great O’Higgins had retired from the eye of the nation and from the scene of his struggles and self-sacrifice.

In Argentina the tale was similar, notwithstanding the enlightened and progressive influence of intellectual men, such as Belgrano, Rivadavia, and numerous others.  The tide of civil strife burst out, and its mad eddies swept away many of those who had proved themselves heroes in the cause of independence.  The severing of ties and of friendship was necessarily abrupt, and occasionally claimed a victim.  Among these was Liniers, who in the last days of the Spanish regime had gathered together a local force on the River Plate, and had dislodged the British forces from Buenos Aires.  This, however, did not prevent his execution by the patriots soon after the outbreak of the war.

To enter into the details of individual cases is impossible here, since volumes could be written on every separate decade, and on a score and more of the personalities of this particular epoch in Argentina alone.  Paraguay stood out as an exception to the rest.  In that State the reins of power fell into the hands of Dr. Francia, a merciless autocrat, who suffered nothing whatever to be disturbed within the frontiers of his country, and who now ruled with a ferocious tyranny, such as had scarcely been approached even in the darkest days of the early colonial age.  After that Paraguay was destined to undergo its baptism of fire as well as the rest; the process seemed inevitable.  In Paraguay it had not been avoided; it had merely been postponed.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE REPUBLIC OF PERU

With the end of the Spanish power the centres of importance—­hitherto quite arbitrarily and artificially chosen—­tended to drift to their natural situations.  From time to time it is true that the balance continued to be disturbed by political considerations, but in the main the true order of progress was permitted to proceed unchecked.  Thus the importance of Peru fell to its intrinsic and industrial level, and the States of the north, artificially buoyed up for generations as these had been by the Spaniards, now assumed a secondary place in the affairs of the Continent.

Each State, in fact, had now to rely upon its own population and resources alone.  Of the number there were few enough who were not generously provided with the latter; it was in the former asset that so many were found acutely wanting, of course through no fault of their own.  Thus it was that when the new division of territories took place, many of those countries which Nature had provided with an almost extraordinary degree of wealth found themselves in a state of poverty through the mere want of labour which might develop these resources.  In some cases this disadvantage has been overcome to a greater or lesser extent; in others the situation continues practically unaltered to the present day.