RETIREMENT OF PRESIDENT CASTRO.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8153, 1 June 1906, Page 3

RETIREMENT OF PRESIDENT CASTRO.

When President Castro's temporary retirement was announced last month, a sigh of relief must have gone np from several oapitala. Now that his permanent retirement is announced, one might almost imagine etaid foreign secretaries throwing up their hats in joy. For this head of the insignificant South American republic has, during the last few years, flouted the MOST POWERFUL NATIONS of Europe, not to mention the United States, and has wielded a despotism "scarcely paralleled Binoe the days of Sir Henry Morgan, Admiral of Buccaneers," as one Loudon paper puts it. In 1897 bo was a small cattle-rancher on the Colombian frontier, Jand a member of the Federal Senate. Having helped to lift General Audrade into the Presidency, he was cut by that dis tinguished officer, whereupon he followed the example of antiquity, and publicly prophesied that one •day he would be great. "To-day, 1 ' be said, "I go homo; ydt before twelve months are |gone I will return, but as President of Venezuela." And he did. The Venezuela rauchmen on the border in those days used to EVADE THE TAX GATHERER , by the simple method of driving their herds over the Colombiau bor•der, and when the Colombian taxgatherer came, the Colombians used to return the call. Hut in 1897 the two tax-gatherers conceived the brilliant idea of arriving on the same day, and there was trouble. ■Castro SUFFERED CONFISCATION and general injury, and determined to strike a blow in* revenge. His mountain friends joined him, and the force marched on Caracas, unseated Andraae, and put Castro in his place. Then followed one of the most amazing exhibitions of impudent despotism in modern times. "From time to time he has subdued rebellion with every circumstanoe of severity," said a London paper at the time of hia temporary retirement. "He baß annulled all the concessions granted to foreigners from which be drew no profit. He has granted monopolies, forced sales, and imposed the most grinding taxation. At this moment the Republic owes its foreign creditors some £5,000,000 sterling in borrowed money, and another £3,000,000 in •defaulted interests." In the face OF THIS INDEBTEDNESS it is amusing to find the President, on retiring, saying that he "desires to retire into private life for some time, in order to obtain rest after "the strenuous labours which his position exacts, and which have been ■so successful during the past year." An illustrious predecessor eloped to Paris with the CONTENTS OF THE TREASURE, and it is pietty certain that Castro has been accumulating a tidy fortune in his years of oppression and defiance. People iD his house have told stories of shipments of -gold sent abroad by trie far-aighted President. The last occupant of the President's ohair left hurriedly by the baok door, and is now working for a living in Trinidad, *but Caatro has been wise enough to-retire Jbefore te inevitable crash came.