Page:A history of Chile.djvu/293

 ERA OF CONSTITUTION MAKING 265 justice, public worship and public instruction, Don Miguel Luis Amunitegui j war and navy, Don Belisa- rio Prat. The cabinet officers were several times changed during the next five years; in 1878, Prat was in the interior ; Alfonso, foreign affairs ; Santa Maria, (a most pronounced liberal), justice; Cornelio Saave- dra war and navy ; finance, vacant. Santa Maria was about the only one who remained in the cabinet through- out the administration. The later ministry favored, more than the first cab- inet had, the early settlement of the dispute with the Argentine Republic over the Patagonian boundary, which question had created considerable popular ex- citement about this time. Don Barros Araiia had been sent to Buenos Ayres as envoy and had entered into an agreement with the Argentines to submit the dispute to arbitration upon the question as to whether the-dis- puted territory belonged to Buenos Ayres or to Chile, at the time independence from Spain was declared in 1810. This was not satisfactory to the Chileans, as they based their claim more upon the long acquiescence of the Argentines in their claim, subsequent to that date, than they did upon the question of actual pos- session in the colonial period. The minister of for- eign affairs at Santiago declared the act of Senor Araiia to be unauthorized, and congress passed a vote of cen- sure upon the plenipotentiary. Subsequently it was agreed between the two republics that the question should be submitted to arbitration, and this to be con- ducted in accordance with the treaty of 1856, both gov- ernments in the meantime to prevent armed conflict and refrain from sending war vessels to the coasts or rivers of the disputed territories. The troublesome question was not finally settled until the 23rd day of October, 1881, when a treaty was