Some of the dictator's suspects were assassinated
in the public streets. Even exiles were not secure from his wrath and
in one instance a Dominican writer named Eugenio Deschamps, who had
been publishing articles against him in Porto Rico, was seriously
wounded in the streets of Ponce by an assassin's bullet.
Ability and unscrupulousness, courage and cruelty, resolution and
cunning were mingled in the character of Heureaux. Over the country he
exercised the powers of an absolute monarch. He was the fountain head
of all government and the real chief of every department. The accounts
of the government and his private accounts were treated by him as one
and the same thing. His ambition to remain in power necessitated the
expenditure of large sums which he obtained through improvident
foreign loans and usurious contracts with local merchants. Those whom
he favored grew rich; his enemies he ruined. In other ways also his
morals swerved from the straight and narrow path, and an isolated town
gloried in the distinction of being the only place in the Republic
where the president did not have a mistress.
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