Page:A history of Chile.djvu/225

ERA OF CONSTITUTION MAKING 205 Other decrees followed with a view to regulating eccle- siastical matters, some convents were suppressed, cer- tain religious functions were prohibited and a consid- erable amount of church property was converted to the use of the state. Failing in his mission, Muzi asked for his passports and embarked for Rome, after a resi- dence of eight months in the country. One of the most pressing difficulties with which Freire had to deal, was the depleted condition of the public treasury. He had come into office chiefly because of the dissatisfaction which prevailed by reason of the condition of financial affairs under O'Higgins' admin- istration. Yet even during O'Higgins' six years of rule the resources of the state had been sufficient to balance the expenditures, while very soon under Freire, 1S24, the expenditures amounted to two and one-half mil- lions of dollars, the revenues to but little over a mil- lion. In this trying situation dangerous expedients were, perforce, resorted to, one of which was the confiscation of monasterial property throughout the state, and the application of it to the service of the government. Again, the old monopolies of staples, once sold to pri- vate corporations by the government, the estancos, were resorted to. The interest on the public debt due in London amounted to about ^400,000 a year. To discharge this, the Freire government sold to a com- pany of merchants, landholders and British agents, Portales heading the company, the sole right to import tobacco, to grow it, and to sell it for a period of twenty years. At the end of that time they were to pay off the whole debt ; the government meanwhile was to fos- ter the monopoly by a grant of a half million dollars. A subsequent congress ratified this agreement with the clause left out by which the company agreed to dis-