cultivators of
the soil from their humble holdings. On the other hand, under the
statesmanlike management of Jose Yves Limantour, the Minister of
Finance, the monetary situation at home and abroad was strengthened
beyond measure, and banking interests were promoted accordingly.
Further, an act abolishing the alcabala, a vexatious internal revenue
tax, gave a great stimulus to freedom of commerce throughout the
country. In order to insure a continuance of the new regime, the
constitution was altered in three important respects. The amendment of
1890 restored the original clause of 1857, which permitted indefinite
reelection to the presidency; that of 1896 established a presidential
succession in case of a vacancy, beginning with the Minister of Foreign
Affairs; and that of 1904 lengthened the term of the chief magistrate
from four years to six and created the office of Vice President.

In Central America two republics, Guatemala and Costa Rica, set an
excellent example both because they were free from internal commotions
and because they refrained from interference in the affairs of their
neighbors. The contrast between these two quiet little nations, under
their lawyer Presidents, and the bellicose but equally small Nicaragua,
Honduras, and Salvador, under their chieftains, military and juristic,
was quite remarkable. Nevertheless another attempt at confederation
was made. In 1895 the ruler of Honduras, declaring that reunion was a
"primordial necessity," invited his fellow potentates of Nicaragua and
Salvador to unite in creating the "Greater Republic of Central America"
and asked Guatemala and Costa Rica to join. Delegates actually appeared
from all five republics, attended fiestas, gave expression to pious
wishes, and went home! Later still, in 1902, the respective Presidents
signed a "convention of peace and obligatory arbitration" as a means
of adjusting perpetual disagreements about politics and boundaries; but
nothing was done to carry these ideas into effect.

The personage mainly responsible for these failures was Jose Santos
Zelaya, one of the most arrant military lordlets and meddlers that
Central America had produced in a long time. Since 1893 he had been
dictator of Nicaragua, a country not only entangled in continuous
wrangles among its towns and factions, but bowed under an enormous
burden of debt created by excessive emissions of paper money and by the
contraction of more or less scandalous foreign loa