I enclose a translation of the manifesto of Señor Francisco Guzman, who
was inaugurated as President of Nicaragua on the 1st instant, at
Masaya.
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State,
Washington, D. C.
[Translation.]
Nicaraguans: Elevated by your suffrages to
the presidency of the republic, and highly grateful for the
distinguished honor conferred upon me by placing in my hands your
dearest interests, I am in duty bound to make known the rule of
conduct which I propose to pursue, my opinions, my desires, and my
hopes.
In commencing my administrative period I am certainly very far from
considering myself the chief of the nation, with the right of
command over my compatriots. I am simply a citizen charged to watch
over the common welfare, the responsible and removable agent, with
no more power or force than the power and the force of my
fellow-citizens, without other influence, without other prestige
than I may have gained by the justification of my acts and the love
and sympathy of the Nicaraguan people.
I desire to be, above all, a civil agent, disposed always to
amalgamate, avoiding the shock of clashing interests; I desire to be
the link of union between opposing parties, to unite the miserable
rivalries of localism, the exaggerated passions which the
pertinacious spirit of party imposes upon true public interests; I
desire to smother, if possible, by an open conciliatory course, the
principal cause of our misfortunes, the origin of our evils, that
black political intolerance which envenoms the air of the country
and declares irreconcilable enmity to a dissenting brother.
Though as a private man I can give my sympathies to whatever
political faction of the country I choose, as a public man I know no
party colors, none but Nicaraguan brothers; and in every instance
during my administration the most meritorious shall always be
preferred to the most attached.
I am called to govern a people educated in the scale of misfortune,
but always disposed to work and to sacrifice, and capable,
therefore, of improving in a high degree their actual condition. I
do not wish, however, to dress up the national pride by presenting a
brilliant situation unattended with embarrassments, neither do I
wish to dazzle with vain and pompous promises which rarely come to
be fulfilled.
In my conception the progress of the nation should be the nation’s
proper work; the government neither can nor ought to be more than
one of the elements of such a work, even though it be the most
powerful. When the state, trespassing certain limits, carries its
influence into the commerce, the agriculture, the industry, and all
the branches which form the elements of culture of a country, making
itself their protector and centralizer, apparently guiding while it
is only dragging the nation along, it creates those odious
monopolies and their sad train of consequences which result in
paralyzing the fountains of wealth.
I believe that the principal need of the republic is to secure upon
solid bases its proper tranquillity. This result, in my opinion, can
only be secured by the absolute dominion of the constitution and the
laws, and to these I propose to subject myself in the strictest
manner. The administration of justice and of the public treasury
will occupy my very particular attention; absolute independence in
the first and every possible economy in the second; in these
essential branches judge me, Nicaragua. To enlarge the power of the
magistrate, the municipal power, from the first to the last of its
agents, the power of all those who are charged to watch over the
security, the honor, the life, and the property of Nicaraguans;
exemplification and honesty in the management of our scanty
treasury, suppression of those employes who are judged to be
unnecessary; order and the severest rigor in case of the least shade
of dishonesty in the management of the revenues—such are my opinions
on these two points.
I know very well that in the position which I am to occupy for the
next four years I am to be the target of rough criticism, but
instead of fearing, I desire, on the contrary, to hear perpetually
the authorized and free voice of the supreme judge of the term, the
sovereign tribunal of civilization, public opinion; the opinion that
has its voice, and that voice the press, which I love and reverence
and which I call to my aid, desiring its counsels, its severest
criticism, and invoking it for my guide in my rough path, not as a
servile and adulatory press, sold always to power, and submitted in
advance to the eyes of the mandatory, a dense cloud of incense
hiding from the sight the sufferings, the necessities, and the true
aspirations of the country. Republican by conviction and by
character, I desire to hear the counsels of the press, which
criticises with moderation and independence, to listen to its
judgments, however severe they may be; and you need not fear that an
agent of the government will ever go around, with iniquitous laws of
circumstance, to put his hand upon him who has energy and patriotism
enough to censure the abuses or the equivocations of power. Its
calumny I shall meet impassibly, despising, but never persecuting
for it.
Finally, I call upon all men to help rue. in my task by their example
and their light. I call upon all honorable men, without distinction
of political opinions, who carry in their souls the true sentiments
of progress and love of country, the pacific and laborious people
who desire liberty and order, who love work, and who will be always
the best props of my government. I desire, also, that the active and
enterprising foreigner, who wishes to make ours his second country,
shall come and co-operate with us in the common work, in which he
will always find me the first to welcome him when he comes to bring
to Nicaragua the examples, the population, and the spirit of
enterprise which we lack. With this object, we ought to cultivate
with earnestness our foreign relations, principally with the great
republic
[Page 690]
of the United
States, with which, unfortunately, we have not as yet any treaty;
and not for one moment ought we to neglect what is so necessary for
the future of our country, or move slowly in uniting our interests
with those of the other Spanish American republics, and especially
with our sisters of the centre, to-day more than ever bound together
by a common destiny.
Fellow-citizens, as the simple delegate of the people, charged with
strange interests, which to me are so dear, I hope to return the
power which is confided to me with the tranquil conscience of an
honest man who has endeavored to comply with his duty. My programme
is the form of oath which I am to take; my most ardent desire is to
secure the happiness of the many, even in spite of the opposition of
the few, and the grandest of my aspirations shall be to contribute
to the last as the most devoted in the holy enterprise of making of
Nicaragua a true republic, where reigns in all its purity the
constitutional system, where liberty, security, and order shall not
be a chimera, and where, in fine, whoever may desire it may find
among us a tranquil and hospitable asylum.
FERNANDO GUZMAN.
Masaya,
March 1, 1867.
