Columbia had been an efficient war machine in the hands of Bolívar by which the independence of South America was secured, but was an anachronism as a nation. The interests of the different sections were antagonistic, and the military organization given to the country only strengthened the germs of disorder. Venezuela and New Granada were geographically marked out as independent nations. Quito from historical antecedents aspired to autonomy. Had Bolívar abstained from his dreams of conquest, and devoted his energies to the consolidation of his own country, he might perhaps have organized it into one nation under a federal form of government, but that was not a task suited to his genius. When his own bayonets turned against him he went so far as to despair of the Republican system altogether, and sought the protection of a foreign King for the last fragment of his shattered Monocracy.
On the 9th April, 1828, he assembled a Convention at Ocaña for the reform of the Constitution of 1821. The partisans of Santander were in a majority, and the Convention was dissolved on the 10th June by the desertion of the partisans of Bolívar.
On the 13th June a popular Junta assembled at Bogotá, at which General Cordoba proposed the re-establishment of the Dictatorship in the person of Bolívar. Bolívar accepted the office, and suppressed that of Vice-President. Military rule became dominant, those who opposed the measure were banished as disturbers of public order, the study of political economy was prohibited in the Universities, and liberty of the press was suspended, but Bolívar promised to convene another Constituent Congress a year from that time. According to Gervinus, the Liberator now tore off the mask and showed the vulgar ambition which lay beneath, yet he was not a tyrant, he was simply a despot driving he knew not whither.
The young men talked of the dagger of Brutus, but an attempt to assassinate him failed, and the principal con-
