convenient--especially when you want to borrow money. If the
Venezuelans, thinly distributed over an area of half a million square
miles, mostly illiterate peasants, half-breeds, and indigenes, were
educated, intelligent men, zealous only for the public weal, it would
be possible for them to have a real republic. They have instead
a government by cliques, tempered by revolution; and a very good
government it is, in harmony with the physical conditions of the country
and the national temperament. Now, it happens that the educated men,
representing your higher classes, are so few that there are not many
persons unconnected by ties of blood or marriage with prominent members
of the political groups to which they belong. By this you will see how
easy and almost inevitable it is that we should become accustomed to
look on conspiracy and revolt against the regnant party--the men of
another clique--as only in the natural order of things. In the event
of failure such outbreaks are punished, but they are not regarded as
immoral. On the contrary, men of the highest intelligence and virtue
among us are seen taking a leading part in these adventures. Whether
such a condition of things is intrinsically wrong or not, or would be
wrong in some circumstances and is not wrong, because inevitable, in
others, I cannot pretend to decide; and all this tiresome profusion
is only to enable you to understand how I--a young man of unblemished
character, not a soldier by profession, not ambitious of political
distinction, wealthy for that country, popular in society, a lover of
social pleasures, of books, of nature actuated, as I believed, by the
highest motives, allowed myself to be drawn very readily by friends and
relations into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the moment,
with the object of replacing it by more worthy men--ourselves, to wit. Our adventure failed because the authorities got wind of the affair
and matters were precipitated. Our leaders at the moment happened to be
scattered over the country--some were abroad; and a few hotheaded men
of the party, who were in Caracas just then and probably feared arrest,
struck a rash blow: the President was attacked in the street and
wounded. But the attackers were seized, and some of them shot on the
following day. When the news reached me I was at a distance from the
capital, staying with a friend on an estate he owned on the River
Quebrada Honda, in the State of Guarico, some fifteen to twenty miles
from the town of Zaraza. My friend, an officer in the army, was a leader
in the conspiracy; and as I was the only son of a man who had been
greatly hated by the Minister of War, it became necessary for us both
to fly for our lives. In the circumstances we could not look to be

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