or a fine name, is very 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.