satisfied with humbly imitating; she is rich in statesmen, but they have lost the knack of thinking, planning, acting, and are contented to be ranked as artistic orators; she still possesses a race of noble peasants, heart-whole, simple-minded, and sober, who gladly pay their last peseta to be spent in the defence of abstract ideals, but they are indignant to find that it is squandered by self-seeking hidalgos, whose way is corruption and whose name is legion. The causes of this calamitous breakdown of one of the mightiest nations of modern times are numerous, and, as some of them are open to controversy, it would serve no useful purpose to discuss them exhaustively. One of the principal evils which Spaniards themselves always admit and occasionally lament is the extraordinary lack of instruction which characterizes the people as a whole. Out of eighteen million inhabitants the number of illiterates exceeds sixteen millions! It is only fair to add, however, that the difference between the two classes is one of form rather than of substance, and is contained less in the greater number of ideas possessed by the educated than in the elegance with which they express the every-day notions and pathetic delusions which are common to all. Take university education, for example, which in the palmy days of Salamanca University was fully abreast of the European times we find that, in the opinion of friendly French experts, it is calculated to inspire, without justifying, the pride of superior knowledge which teems with the germs of every species of misfortune. The administrative authority possesses the right of regulating the lectures and programmes, and the printed textbook, which in every case must supplement the oral instruction given by the professor, is vetoed, or even directly chosen by the Government, in deference to considerations which have nothing in common with science. M. Paul Melon, a Frenchman who made a special study of higher education in Spain, writes: "The Bachelor who has terminated the course of the institute knows not one word of Greek, extremely little Latin, and, judging by the expositions which one hears at the university-even at the close of a year of study-he is utterly ignorant of contemporary history.” Modern languages are likewise unknown in Spain to a degree which has to be realized before it can be believed. Politicians, statesmen, physicians, journalists, courtiers, and even merchants are content with speaking their own sonorous language-and can very seldom express themselves in any other. I have seen Englishmen and Frenchmen in the Foreign Department of the Central Telegraph Office wandering disconsolately hither and thither unable to find a single official conversant, in any degree, with the French tongue. The Liberal Government of Señor Sagasta, having introduced censorship of foreign telegrams such as has never been practised in Russia,* was at its wits' ends to find a censor capable of reading messages written in German, and finally it was decided that they should go as they were, unexamined. I frequently saw two identical telegrams, of which one was in French and the other in German, handed in at the Telegraph Office, and on the following day I learned that the French message had been suppressed by the Censor, and the German telegram transmitted without remark. Monumental ignorance of contemporary history and modern languages has left its abiding mark on the ruling classes in Spain, and is to a large extent answerable for the irreparable calamities which have overtaken the brave, patient, and noble-minded people. It is dangerous for one blind man to lead another; but it is utterly calamitous when the sightless leader has visions, and is under the delusion that he can see. And these are exactly the relations which, ever since the days of Queen Isabella, have subsisted between the rulers and the ruled. The results thereof are writ large in every page of *The Spanish Censor refused to allow the speech of the Marine Minister to be telegraphed to London even in the Minister's own words. If this prohibition could have assured the absolute suppression of that remarkable explanation, I should warmly approve the measure in the interests of the Spanish Government. As this was impossible it had merely the effect of a superfluous and damaging comment. contemporary Spanish history, in every step of successive Spanish Governments, in the dangerous mixture of wanton rigor and unpatriotic license which was meted out to the colonies, in the paralyzation of all healthy enterprise in the Peninsula, in the neglect of national interests, and the step-motherly treatment of the army and the navy. The sixteen million illiterates and a majority of those whose modest literary accomplishments entitle them to rank with the "classes" care nothing for politics, and have but one fervent wish: to be allowed to work in peace, to better their lot and the lot of their children, and to be permitted to enjoy as much as possible of the fruits of their own honest labor. For politics, domestic, colonial, or international, they have neither taste nor understanding. Cuba never affected this class of Spaniards in the least. The colonial wave never reached them in any form but that of a mighty destroyer, whose human victims were more numerous than those of Moloch, and whose cruelties exceeded those of the old Mexican gods. These peasants are of different races, they possess their own tribal customs and traditions intact, and the main links that bind them all in one more or less homogeneous whole are devotion to their religion and fanatic love of their native land. Their inborn mental and moral qualities are apparently of a high order, but owing to a deplorable lack of development have never been properly utilized and are, therefore, as the Schoolmen term it, in posse rather than in esse. The minority of five or six hundred thousand are the politicians, the mighty Archimedes who intend to move the world, as soon as they themselves are cozily settled in snug little Government offices. For every petty post in the gift of the Government, which brings in but £30 or £40 a year, there are from eight to twelve candidates impatiently waiting for the moving of the waters, and ready to preach the Conservative, Liberal, Republican, or Carlist gospel according to the outlook at the moment. The number of these trusty followers is much larger than the loaves and fishes with which the triumphant party can hope to feed them, and amounts in all to about 420,000 men, with stentorian voices and minds open to political conviction. Heretofore the Liberals and Conservatives divided the spoils of office in a manner so refreshingly novel and simple that one wonders it was never hit upon in other countries. When one party had had a fairly good innings, and the other had remained long enough in the cold outside, the principle of live and let live was always appealed to and enforced, the Government resigning on a pretext, and the Opposition coming in for a share of the good things of office. To give an idea of the extent to which Parliamentary institutions have taken root in the country, I may say that it was the chief of the Conservative party, Canovas del Castillo, who, desirous of acclimatizing party government in Spain, actually and deliberately founded the opposition to his own Cabinet, and placed Señor Sagasta at its head! The Conservatives having had a long spell of power, and showing no signs of natural decay, Sagasta declared that unless he and his merry men were given a chance of partaking of the loaves and fishes they would have to organize a revolution. Thereupon Señor Canovas sought out the King, explained matters to him, and said: "Sire, I will furnish the necessary pretext. I will ask you to give me your confidence for ten years in advance, and you will naturally refuse to agree to the absurd request. Then my Cabinet will resign, and your Majesty will call in the Liberals." And the plan was carried out! This puerile play, the costs of which the wretched people must pay, is the substance of what is called "Constitutional Government" in Spain. It need hardly be said that the elections, which are "secret and free," invariably send a majority of the party which happens to be in power at the time. A brief description of how this "free and independent expression of the enlightened opinion of the country" was provoked a few weeks ago by the Liberal Cabinet of Señor Sagasta, which a Spanish writer later published as typical of all elections, may prove instructive if not edifying. The Cabinet, and in this particular case Señor Sagasta himself, the Apostle of Liberal principles, who had been for years a revolutionist, decided beforehand how large a majority he needed, and this done, he considered how the seats of the minority should be distributed, for a Spanish Prime Minister, like Napoleon, leaves nothing to chance -when elections are in question. Not only had the adversaries to be counted but also weighed; for it is not enough that the Minister should resolve to allow a certain number of Republicans, of Carlists, of Conservatives, etc., to be returned, he must also determine which of them. It is a delicate task, but noblesse oblige, and a Prime Minister can only do his best; still, one would think he would severely draw the line of anti-dynastic parties. But not at all. During the recent debates in the Cortes, after the disaster at Cavite, Count Romanones taunted the Republicans with having been snugly installed in their seats by the Government of his Majesty the King, and with forgetting what they owed the Cabinet. Count Romanones is not a simple unofficial individual: he is the Alcalde of Madrid, who presided over" the elections, carefully controlling them, and who occupies the position of righthand man to the Minister of the Interior, which, as the Nacional puts it, is "the Central Manufactory of the Parliaments." "What will the country think of the Government?" asks that organ. "What will it think of the Parliament in which even the very anti-dynastic oppositional factions owe their seats to Government favor?" 66 This, however, is by the way. The manner in which the elections are carried out is further described by the Spanish writer in a manner which suggests the question, Is it right, is it loyal, is it moral, for a party calling itself Liberal to preach Constitutionalism to the people, and, having acquired power by the advocacy of this doctrine, to drill and drive this people, in defiance of the fundamental principles of Liberalism, as if they were so many head of cattle? The critic declares that people who have no right whatever to record their votes are conducted early to the polling-booths, where they vote, of course, for the Government's candidates. The real voters, taught by painful experience, generally remain at home, their names being assumed by the others. If, however, a voter appears and insists on exercising his right, he is boldly accused of having already given his vote, and therefore of a criminal attempt to poll twice over, is hurried off to prison, and a wearisome investigation is begun. It may end in his favor, no doubt; but before it concludes he will probably wish he were at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Many deceased electors arise from their tombs in order to record their adhesion to the Government in office-or, at least, people assuming the names of defunct citizens come and exercise their rights without let or hindrance. The dead thus vigilantly watch over the welfare of the living, which, strange to say, is invariably and indissolubly bound up with the success of the Government of the day. Now it may be, and probably is, true that the people are not yet educated up to the standard which would qualify them to judge for themselves; but to an unsophisticated European mind it would seem that to act upon this supposition, and at the same time to discourse eloquently on the contrary assumption, is unworthy of any party calling itself Liberal or ethical. Nobody in Spain, however, has as yet declared or felt that tactics of this kind are at all out of keeping with the Liberalism of SS. Sagasta, Moret, and Gullon; and Spaniards are by far the best judges of the question. Despite the doubtful ethics of politics and the low ebb of intellectual culture, if not precisely in consequence of these, the gift of tongues is possessed and cultivated by Spanish statesmen to a degree unknown in contemporary Europe. Eloquence of a high order is the one light visible in Spanish politics, as phosphorescence is the characteristic of decaying woods and forests. The Peninsula possesses some of the greatest orators of modern times, whose rich and varied imagery flows softly, smoothly, soothingly over the finest intellectuals and without a single original thought to break the pleasing monotony. Don Emilio Castelar, the eminent Republican, for instance, or Señor Moret, the Colonial Minister, who was the soul and brain of Sagasta's Cabinet, is capable of holding forth for hours and hours upon any subject under the sun in sonorous and musical periods which tickle the ears and hypnotize the minds of their mystically disposed hearers. Spanish politicians love eloquence as Midas loved gold; and their taste is gratified as his was. They have never yet felt the want of statesmanship; and it may well be doubted whether at the present moment there is one statesman of even the third-rate order among the many politicians who claim to possess a panacea for the grave disorders of their illstarred Fatherland and clamor for an opportunity of experimenting with it. There is, indeed, one strong man in the country, a man par excellence, one who knows his own mind, adjusts means to ends, sees things as they are without green spectacles or blue; and that man is General Weyler. Whether he also possesses the makings of a statesman it is as yet too early to say, but it is hardly too much to affirm that the very errors of such a man would probably prove more advantageous to his country than the thorough realization of the deliberate plans of the professed politicians. [Those great artistic talkers whose mellifluous phrases are to thoughts as the thinnest gold-leaf is to the most solid nugget of gold, have "governed" Spain for half a century, and to the stranger who desires to see the visible and tangible results of their administration, one may repeat the words of Teufelsdröckh's epitaph on the monument of Count Zähdarm: "Si vis monumentum, adspice"-impoverishment, stagnation, hunger, ruin. Doubtless other and more subtly solvent forces have likewise been at work, but a third-rate politician could and would have stayed their action; and the immediate and proximate causes of the national catastrophe are, without doubt, the polished rhetoricians who painted with their richest oratorical colors the sepulchres of mouldering bones. Don Emilio Castelar is a perfect type of the political orator who would heal a nation's ills with magniloquent words, as Bishop Berkeley sought to cure al! human disorders with tar-water. Like the once celebrated Pico de la Mirandola, he has written countless volumes. in folio, in quarto, and in octavo, which might with average precision be labelled: "De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis," the numerous supplements being entitled " Paralipomena." History, poetry, romance, politics, theology, art, and science have all been whipped by this latter-day literary confectioner into oceans of sugary cream, an infinitesimal quantity of which cloys the critical palate.* This professor, politician, and poet was for some time Minister of Foreign Affairs, and once attained the high dignity of Chief of the State, with results which will not soon be forgotten in Spain. Señor Castelar is an out-and-out Republican, and he speaks of his doctrine with the natural pride of a political Paracelsus, who has discovered an important truth which is destined to save and ennoble humanity. The one infallible nostrum for all the ills of Spain is the Republican form of Government. Nor does Don Emilio mean a Republic like that of Sparta, or even after the model of that of Switzerland. By no means. His principle is, little causes and great effects. So vast and thaumaturgical is the virtue of the mere form that it alone would suffice to reforin men, morals, and manners, and, to use a hackneyed Hibernicism, transform arid mountains into smiling valleys. He would change absolutely nothing but the form. Last year he explained his views on the subject to a French friend of his, who made them public shortly afterward at the risk of their being plagiarized by others. He said: "Spain is a Republic already. : * Among Señor Castelar's works I may quote: Lucan his Life, his Genius, his Poems;"A History of Civilization during the First Five Centuries of Christianity "Portraits of European Celebrities (Semblanzas);""Souvenirs of Italy" "History of the Republican Movement in Europe:""The Historical Studies Religious Revolution ;"' Heart:"" on the Middle Ages;" The History of a Historical Gallery of Celebrated Women;" The Formula of Progress ;" Political and Social Questions ;" Ransom of the Slave;"Letters on EuroHis work on Russia conpean Politics," etc. tains more astounding errors in a comparatively small compass than could be conveniently corrected in two bulky volumes. 64 The If one day it should fall to our lot to bestow upon it this name, we should leave everything as it is, and would merely accord to the President certain executive rights over and above those which the King possesses. "* That is to say, Spain is suffering from misgovernment. from administrative corruption, from incompetent statesmen, from financial exhaustion, from the want of a clearly defined policy, from a vast nosology of political diseases; but they will all vanish as at the waving of a magician's wand if, instead of calling the country a monarchy, we give it the nickname of Republic, and speak of the ruler as President! And Don Emilio Castelar is one of the most brilliant lights among the contemporary politicians of the Peninsula! Another eminent Spanish statesman is the famous Pi y Margall, whose ardent Republicanism is of a shade apparently very different from that which Señor Castelar advocates; but whether it is more or less radical is, I fear, a question that others must decide. Señor Pi y Margall has frequently assured his eighteen million fellow-countrymen, whose knowledge of technical terms and of Greek roots is presumbly very limited, that the Republic which, in his opinion, could alone save the country ought to be based upon a compact which must be "synallagmatical, bilateral, and commutative." If it be all three, then his countrymen may sleep peacefully in their beds at night, confident that everything will prosper in the best of political communities. Pi y Margall was a member of the Cabinet at a very critical period of contemporary Spanish history, and one day coming into the council-room, he announced to his colleagues, in a sad and serious tone of voice, that he had something of great urgency and transcendent importance to submit to their consideration. The Ministers looked anxious and listened. The orator then informed them that he had lately been forced to the unwelcome conclusion that the Mohammedan Mosque at Cordova belongs of right to the Moors, and ought in common honesty to be re stored to them by one of those spontaneous acts of justice which, however unpalatable at the moment, invariably redound in the long run to the credit of the Government which possesses the courage and the integrity to accomplish them! The State at that time not. being founded on the synallagmatical, bilateral, and commutative compact, turned a deaf ear to the proposal of its faithful servant, and went on to consider the current questions of the day. Another of the pillars of the Republican party is Señor Salmeron, who has played important parts in the grand political drama of Spain in the facile and florid manner characteristic of most Spanish statesmen. This eminent orator was once called upon, in his capacity as Secretary of State, to sign the death warrant of a condemned criminal. Like another very famous Republican of Arras in France, Señor Salmeron hesitated, refused, tendered his resignation, and left his colleagues in a most embarrassing position at a very critical juncture. Robespierre, it is true, got over this morbid tenderness very quickly, and became, as it were, to the manner born; but Señor Salmeron, who has since had very little experience of affairs, is presumably of the same opinion still. Statesmen of this calibre might successfully govern places like Pitcairn's Island, or possibly Plato's Republic, but a sorely afflicted country like Spain has little to hope from their principles. or their practice. They know exactly what is going to happen to England, France, Europe, the world, in a hundred or a thousand years, but are stone blind to the imminent dangers that threaten their own country to-day and assume the form of national calamities to-morrow. I was especially struck with a curious instance of this abnormal short-sightedness just before the present war broke out. It was at the beginning of April. I called on Señor Castelar, whose eloquent articles in French reviews on the political situation were just then being spoken of as masterpieces of style. In the course of conversation I broached the subject of the coming war. Don Emilio started. "War?" he said. "War," I re"Between whom?" Be peated. 66 |