President Balmaceda delivered an address, defending his action in taking into his hands the reins of government, and giving a hopeful outlook for the future. Congress immediately passed a bill legalizing the president's acts, and then began the discussion of a reformation of the constitution, a discussion which was kept up until Montt and Canto had sent the members flying.
On the 25th of June, electors from the provinces were chosen favorable to the candidacy of Don Claudio Vicuña, Balmaceda's choice for his successor, and on July 25th he was duly elected, but not fully installed before Balmaceda's downfall. Señor Vicuña was a wealthy gentleman of an old and distinguished family, as old in fact as the conquest, and does not appear to have been in any respect an objectionable man, notwithstanding the fact that he has been charged with cruelties almost equalling Balmaceda's.[1]
The close of the struggle drew on. The province of Aconcagua raised two regiments for the oppositionists, and clamored for rifles. To supply them, the northern army having determined to go south before the government vessels could be got away from foreign ports and before Balmaceda could farther strengthen himself and install his successor, Vicuña, in office, landed at
- ↑ As for instance, that he wanted to fire a Hotchkiss gun into a crowd assembled at the door of the Intendencia within which he was established in Valparaiso at the time of the August fight, and that he was only detained from so doing by the German consul. One can hardly credit some of these stories, particularly as to the coloring given them, when they end with such words as "political criminals," "abominable cruelties," and capped with an unrighteous wish that such political refugees as Vicuña, Godoi and Banados Espinosa, might be caught and shot. Senor Vicuña explains the incident by saying that he made his way through the mob, revolver in hand, when he fled for refuge after the battle of Placilla.
The story of Señor Vacuña's alleged atrocity is offset by one from the other side, wherein a Balmaceda sympathizer remarks: "You see to what cowardly extremes the Chilean revolutionists resort". The story is this, and is better history than the above: "Certain capitalists of Santiago, whose names are something more than suspected, entered into relations with a half-breed Englishman of Valparaiso, one Ricardo Cumming, and offered, or sent him $300,000 in order that by means of treachery and dynamite he might bring about the destruction of the 'Imperial,' the 'Lynch' and the 'Condell.' This miserable fanatic Cumming got hold of some Austrians and Italians, gave them some money, and finally offered them $30,000 for each vessel blown up with dynamite. These persons acting in concert with one Sepulveda, who was engaged as a steward in the 'Imperial,' managed to get aboard and to stow away behind the bolster on Sepulveda's bunk an infernal
