He displayed
administrative talents of a high order, with all the firmness and
resolution of a soldier, yet with all the business capacity and peaceful
proclivities of a civilian.
Laying down the Presidential office in 1834, he was again called upon
to assume it four years later, and until the close of 1842 Venezuela
prospered under his direction. The foreign and domestic debt was
liquidated by the products of national industry, and three millions of
dollars were left in the treasury on the accession to the Presidency
of General Soublette, in 1843. Honors had rained on the _ci-devant_
impetuous horseman, whose shout had once so frequently been the prelude
to slaughter and devastation. William the Fourth of England presented
General Paez, in 1837, with a sword of honor; Louis Philippe of France
invested him, in 1843, with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor; and
two years later, there arrived from Oscar of Sweden the Cross of the
Military Order of the Sword.
But in 1850, and thenceforward, until 1858, Jose Antonio Paez trod the
streets of New York as an exile from his native land.
General Jose T. Monagas was elected President of Venezuela in 1848, and
created dissatisfaction by his course of action. Paez placed himself
at the head of an insurrectionary movement against him, and, being
defeated, was imprisoned in the city of Valencia. General Monagas,
influenced, it is probable, by feelings of ancient friendship, and
remembering the pardon extended to himself on a former similar occasion,
contented himself with a decree of exile against the captive veteran,
and Paez embarked for St.
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