Rafael Nuñez to the people, September 10, 1885

address to the people.

[From the Panama Daily Star and Herald, September 30, 1885.]

President Nuñez has issued the following address:

The President of the Republic to the Colombians.

The nation has just rescued herself, by her own prudent action, and thanks to Divine Providence, from an armed anarchy which made a last desperate effort to op-pose the advent and establishment of liberal institutions. With judicious firmness the government directed the defense of the society thus threatened with imminent disaster, and it has now to perform the duty of preparing the re-establishment of an altered constitutional regimen.

The infidelity of the sectional governments of Antioquia, Bolivar, Boyaca, and Tolima on the one hand, and the acts of sedition which were committed at Magdalena and Panama on the other, virtually deprived the expressed regimen in those States of its proper force and effect. Santander may be said to have been in the same condition since the last months of 1884, in consequence of disturbances, apparently local, which occurred there in the middle of August, although the recognized representative of the legitimate Government, Dr. Narciso Gonzales Lineros, has not failed to exercise his authority without interruption throughout the State, in spite of the vicissitudes of war. The same cause has also prevented the voting for the President of the Union, which should have been decided on the 6th of the present month, and the election of members to the National Congress. In accordance with the precedents of the constitution, it has become indispensable to promote a reunion of the governments of the States, as the most natural method, under the circumstances, of reconstructing the shattered elements of the Union on well-defined principles.

The numerous and expressive manifestations which the municipalities and citizens of the Republic daily direct to the Government clearly indicate the necessities of the entire country in the present important epoch of our history. Reform is therefore sanctioned beforehand by the unequivocal will of the people. In undertaking the necessary task of formulating this will into written institutions, a task in which I invoke the protection of the All-Powerful, I am but fulfilling an imperious duty, contributing by my conscience and authority to the creation of a political order, free from dangerous fallacies, which may be susceptible of realizing that wished for development of our young civilization that has been unhappily so often interrupted. We find ourselves unavoidably in a constitutional interregnum, but in this interregnum no legitimate interest will suffer; for the severe prescriptions of the law of peoples will be applied with the sole object of the complete pacification of the country, in order that the great sacrifices which the victories of the national arms have cost may not prove to have been made to no purpose, and in order that prudential measures may speedily and effectively check the public misery which, after some years of social insecurity, already begins to assume alarming proportions.