Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/129

 Note. — April, 1835. — As the reader may wish to know the present political state of Chile, the editor subjoins the following extract from the last letter which he has received from that country, and dated Santiago, 22d September, 1834 : — "I am happy to say that the country still enjoys perfect quiet. Liberal ideas, and the freedom of the press, are daily becoming more unknown. The power of the priesthood is every where unchecked ; but you know too well the value of tranquillity to us foreigners in these countries to suppose that we repine."

" Amongst the guests was a Chileno who had been in the United l States as charge d'affaires. Speaking of our country, and those i things which struck him as curious, he told the gentlemen that our ! ' prisons are secure without military guards, and that he had seen [ contrasted with the countries of South America, where even the municipal police consists of soldiers, this circumstance is striking. This gentleman remarked farther, that ' previous to the revolution of 1829, Chile had advanced in slow sure steps; but since that period society had split into political parties, and the social inter- course created and cherished by the Sociedad Filarmonica had almost ceased.'
 * no soldiers in the country except the volunteer corps on holidays :'

" The Philharmonic Society was instituted in 1827, for improving and fostering the native taste for music, and creating a more gene- rally social intercourse." — Three Years in the Pacific, 1831-1834, by an Officer in the United States' Navy."

From the same author we learn that, in the Chilian constitution of May 1833, it is decreed that the religion of the republic is " the Roman Catholic Apostolic. The nation protects it by all the means that conform to the spirit of the Evangelist, and will not permit the exercise of any other."

�� �