The leader of the independents had studied political science not only in foreign books, but also in practice, in public life; he had a profound acquaintance with the country which he governed, and with the Latin American vices which are the incurable weakness of these new democracies. "We have no viceroy in Colombia," he said, "but anonymous rulers. We have a written liberty, but no practical liberty. We have a Republic, but only in name, for opinion is not expressed by the only legitimate means, which is the suffrage." "It is a grave error, generally accepted by us, that the sole object of a political party and all its efforts should tend toward the possession of the public power, represented by the leadership of the national army."
He defends the principle of authority as against anarchy. "The best of instruments, destined for the long and arduous task of civilising the human species."
Respect for the constituted powers is unknown in Colombia. All "dynamic mechanism" should have a governor, that is, a counterpoise to the predominant { 210} impulse. Nuñez writes: "Monarchies need liberal accessory institutions, and republics restrictive or conservative institutions, without which the former degenerate into autocracies and the latter into anarchies, which announce the approach of despotism." In default of the principle of authority, so necessary and generally so feeble in democracies, Rafael Nuñez sought for "elements of order in the moral domain."
He became a conservator; he protected religion, like Portales, in order to give a disorganised nation the firm unity of a law. The ex-radical ordered the teaching of religion in the schools. "Traitor!" cried his former supporters, but if he renounced his former dogmas it was in his intellectual prime, before the lamentable spectacle of an unstable republic. "Fanaticism," he wrote, "is not religion any more than demagogy is liberty; but between religion and morality there is an indissoluble bond."
Colombia had need of a stable internal law, of a morality. To obtain order Dr. Nuñez desired a Catholic unity; he abandoned his radical convictions, and put his trust in authority, religion, and moderate centralisation. But were not the articles of his new programme the result of a free examination of reality and of history? The leaders of the independents were inaugurating an experimental politics.