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thirty years since there had been any disturbance of the domestic
calm of this republic, which seemed to be devoting itself to peace
and to that slow and sure evolution which overcomes
anarchy.
The election of Alessandri to the Presidency five years ago
ensured a speedy change. Alessandri, who was born in 1874,
was a brilliant A kind
lawyer. He became extremely popular.
of mystic on to the higher in the
impulse drove him positions
state. believed in and exalted him. He was a volun
People
teer in the type. He
people's cause?a tribune of the Roman
a
fought against oligarchy and the patrician group which for
century had governed the country with prudence and firmness?
the great landed proprietors, defenders of tradition and oppo
nents of
religious reform. Alessandri preached equality, criticized
the established order and heralded democratic reforms.
Since 1891, the date of the fall of the Dictator-President
Balmaceda, the country had lived under an
exaggerated
a return to autocratic presi
parliamentary r?gime for fear of
dential rule. Desirous to secure the triumph of his ideas,
Alessandri tried to make the laws and carry out a program. In
an interview which he gave me in Paris, he did me the honor to
explain for my benefit the dangers in the situation created in
Chile by the exclusive dominance of Parliament. It had become
impossible to govern. Chamber and Senate, much divided
among themselves, rendered the lives of cabinets precarious.
Congress was committing suicide by slow degrees. Knowing
that they were condemned in advance, ministers never dared
take the initiative, and the President,
incapable of acting, be
came the witness of group
powerless struggles.
A vigorous temperament like that of Alessandri rebelled
such a state of affairs, and his revolt amounted to a re
against
turn of the r?gime which had been discredited in 1891. Holding
his powers to be drawn from the people, the President made up
his mind to govern. A kind of plebiscite at the time of his
election had endowed him with full powers. Against the Senate,
which always had been the rampart of the con
unquestionably
servative classes, the President a frank warfare and
opened
threatened to dissolve it. He met with defeat. He then assumed
a
demagogic attitude, appealed to the mob, and in fiery speeches
condemned the influence of a power which was destined to perish
in the new life of Chile. The Senate in its turn refused to pass
certain laws and accused Alessandri of aspiring to dictatorship.