Castilian Days: I. A Field-Night in the Spanish Cortes
ANY one entering the Session Chamber of the Constituent Cortes, at Madrid, on the night of the 19th of March, 1870, would have observed a state of anxious interest very different from the usual listlessness of that body. For a week or two before, the Budget had been under discussion. The galleries were deserted. The hall showed a vast desert of red-plush benches. A half-dozen conscientious members, with a taste for figures, cried in the wilderness, where there was no one to listen but the reporters. Spanish finances are not a cheerful subject, especially to Spaniards. So while these most important matters were under discussion, the members lounged in the lobbies, and gave themselves up to their cigarettes, and the idle public shunned the tribunes, as if the red and yellow banner of the Spains that waved above the marble portico were a hospital flag.
But on this night the galleries were crammed. The members were all in their places. The gaslight danced merrily on the polished skulls. I have never seen so remarkable a disproportion between gray hairs and bare pates as in this assembly. There are scarcely half a dozen white heads in the house, while a large majority are bald. This rapid increase of calvity is one of the most curious symptoms of the unnatural life of our day. Formerly a hairless head was a phenomenon. The poet mentions this feature of Uncle Ned as a staking proof of his extreme age. A king of France who was deficient in chevelure passed into history as Charles the Bald. But now half the young bucks in a Parisian cotillon go spinning about the room bareheaded as dancing dervishes. In fact, wearing hair is getting to be considered in the gay world as quaint and rococo. The billiard-ball is the type of the modish sconce of the period. Cest mieux porté, says the languid swell of London. This is perhaps one effect of the club life and café life of the time, — the turning of night into day,— burning the candle of life at both ends and whittling at the middle. Nowhere is this persecution of the very principle of life carried farther than in Spain. The frugality of the Spaniards only aggravates the evil. I believe these long nights in the crowded cafés, passed in smoking countless cigarettes and drinking seas of cheap and mild slops, are more deteriorating to the nervous system than the mad, wild sprees of the American frontiersmen.
The Hall of Sessions is a very pretty semicircular room, the seats of the members being arranged in a half-amphitheatre facing the President’s desk. To the left of the President sit the irreconcilable Republicans, next to them the Democrats, then the Carlists and the Union Liberals, and finally, on the extreme right heel of the curving horseshoe, the Progresistas and the Blue Bench of the Ministers.
The Ministerial Bench is so full tonight that you cannot see the blue velvet. At its head sits a slight, dark man, with a grave, thin-whiskered face and serious black clothes, looking, as an observing friend of mine once said, “ like a pious and sympathizing undertaker,” He holds in his dark-gloved hands a little blackand - silver cane, with which he thoughtfully taps his neat and glossy boot. The whole manner and air of the man is sober and clerical. Bien fol est qui s’y fie. This is the President of the Council, Minister of War, Captain-General of the armies of Spain, the Count of Reus, the Marquis of Castillejos, Don Juan Prim, in short. A soldier, conspirator, diplomatist, and born ruler ; a Cromwell without convictions ; a dictator who hides his power ; a Warwick who mars kings better than he makes them. We shall see more of him before the evening is over, much more before the century ends.
Next to Marshal Prim is Admiral Topete, the brave and magnanimous soldier who opened to the exiled generals the gates of Spain, and made the Revolution possible. It was the senseless outrage perpetrated upon the generals of the Union Liberal, arresting and exiling them to the Canaries, which drove that party at last into open rebellion. When, still later, the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier were sent out of Spain, Admiral Topete was charged with the duty of conveying them to Portugal. He came back to his post at Cadiz the determined enemy of the late government and the earnest partisan of Montpensier. In this scandalous town improper motives are of course attributed to all public men. But it is enough to look in the frank, bluff face of Topete, to see that he is a man much more easily influenced by generous impulses than by any hope of gain. He is no politician. He has no clear revolutionary perceptions. He is a bigoted adherent of the Church. But he saw the country dishonored by its profligate rulers. He saw decent citizens outraged and banished by the caprice of power. He went with his whole soul into the conspiracy that was to right this wrong, not looking far beyond his honest and chivalrous nose. The conspiracy was conducted by Prim with wonderful secrecy and skill ; and as if fortune had grown tired of baffling him, the most remarkable luck favored all his combinations. He and Serrano and Dulce, from their far distant exiles, arrived the same night on board Topete’s flag-ship in the Bay of Cadiz, and the next morning the band that played the forbidden Hymn of Riego on the deck of the Saragossa crumbled the Bourbon dynasty with its lively vibrations. Rams’ horns are as good as rifled cannon, when the walls are ready to fall.
Topete has preserved his consistency unspotted ever since. He left the Cabinet when the candidature of the Duke of Genoa was resolved upon, and only returned upon the express provision that he came in as an adherent of Montpensier. He has refused all favors, decorations, or promotions. He has fought all the advances which have been made in the way of religious liberty, and proved himself on all occasions a true friend, a true Catholic, and the most honest and awkward of politicians. The caricaturists are especially fond of him, usually representing him as a jolly Jack Tar, with tarpaulin and portentous shirt - collars, and a vast spread of white duck over the stern sheets. La Flaca recently had an irresistible sketch, representing the gallant Admiral as an Asturian nurse with a dull baby lying in her capacious bosom, bearing an absurd unlikeness to the Duke of Montpensier.
We have dwelt inordinately upon Topete, but he is well worth knowing, and you will see him no more after tonight on the Banco Azul.
Next to him a burly frame, crowned by a round-cropped bullet head lighted up by brilliant, sunken eyes ; the face and voice and manner of the waggish Andalusian. This is the Minister of the Interior ; the man who holds in his hand the thrilling heart-strings of all Spain, who feels the pulse of the people as he used to touch the throbbing wrist of a patient; for Don Nicolas Maria Rivero has been doctor and lawyer and orator before, through the school of conspiracy, he was graduated as statesman. He is a brilliant and impressive talker, and was the idol of the advanced democracy until success and office had exercised upon him their chastening influence. He led the poll in Madrid when elected Deputy, leaving behind him those Dii majores of the Revolution, Prim and Serrano. He is a hearty and generous host, and hates a dull table. An invitation from him is never declined. What a culinary symphony his dinners are, and what exquisite appreciation has presided over the provision of his cellar ! Besides the best wines from beyond the Pyrenees, you find in their highest perfection on his table the native wines of Spain, — the Montilla, with its delicate insinuation of creosote, and the wonderful old Tio Pepe Amontillado, with its downright assertion of ether ; and, better than these tours de force of dryness, the full-bodied, rich-flavored vintages of Jerez and Malaga.
There is still so much good stuff in Rivero, that it seems a pity the Republicans have lost him. They are very bitter upon him, because they once valued him so highly. He has, in spite of his place and his daily acts, a seemingly genuine regard for law and justice. In the autumn of 1869, when the constitutional guaranties had been suspended, Sagasta, the familiar spirit and âme damnée of Prim, who then filled the chair of the Gobernacion, planned the arrest of all the Republican members. Rivero, then President of the Cortes, getting wind of this, went in a whirling rage to Prim and denounced the measure roundly as a folly and a crime, and demanded the revocation of the order. Prim shrugged his narrow shoulders and said : “ Sagasta thinks it is necessary. Go and talk to him.” To Sagasta posted Rivero, and fired his volley at him. The venomous Minister talked back. “ D— them, they deserve it. Some of them are plotting treason. Others would if they dared. They are all a worthless lot any how. It will do them no harm to pass a week or two in jail.” There was nothing to be done with so airy a demon as this. Rivero went back to Prim, and by sheer screaming and bullying had the matter called up before the Council. In the mean time he and Martos put the threatened men on their guard, and not a Republican slept in his house that night. They were distributed around among personal and political friends, and enemies, also ; for the true Spaniard never refuses the shelter he may have to ask to-morrow. The Minister took no deputies that night, and the next morning Rivero went to the Council, his neck clothed with thunder. They say he smashed the top of a mahogany table with the fury of his expounding. He threatened to call the Cortes together and resign in full session, giving his reasons. The Ministry yielded, — probably to save the furniture, — and the order was revoked, to the undoubted disgust of Mr. Sagasta, who felt, we may imagine, as a cat does when she sees a fat mouse playing about the floor, and dares not devour him for fear of waking the bulldog, asleep with his dangerous muzzle between his paws.
Sagasta is sitting now beside Rivero. In the recent new shuffle of the court cards he was transferred from the Interior to Foreign Affairs, — sent into exile, as he calls it. This has, it is said, still further soured a temper which was not deficient in acidity before. He is thought to be drifting away from Prim into the ranks of the reactionary politicians. He has a dark wrinkled face, small bright eyes, the smile and the scowl of Mephistopheles. He is a most vigorous and energetic speaker, but so aggressive and pungent in his style that he rarely fails to raise a tempest in the languid house when he speaks at any length. He has a hearty contempt for the people and a firm reliance upon himself, — two important elements of success for a Latin statesman.
Figuerola, the Minister of Finance, and Echegaray, the Minister of Fomento, or Public Works, sit side by side ; both tall and thin, both spectacled, both bald, both men of great learning and liberal tendencies. They were savants, lecturers, essayists before the Revolution, and often seem to regret the quiet of their libraries, in these stormy scenes.
Mr. Montero Rios, the progressive and enlightened Minister of Grace and Justice, comes next, and the tale of Ministers is completed by the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Becerra, a short, stocky, silent man, who used to be a great orator of the faubourg and barricade, but has now come to take what he calls more serious views of political life. He is, also, a new man in office. He was a schoolmaster. He is a man of great physical nerve. He can snuff a candle at ten paces, firing backward over his shoulder. The Republicans call him a renegade, the aristocracy call him a parvenu. He has an illregulated habit of telling the truth sometimes, and this will, in the end, cost him his place.
This is a good night to see the notabilities of the situation. Fully two thirds of the members elect are in their seats, which is a most unusual proportion. Many of the deputies never occupy their seats. Some are attending to their affairs in distant provinces, some are in exile, and some in prison , for the life of a Spanish patriot is subject to both of these accidents. But of those who can come, few are away to-night.
On the extreme left of the chamber is a young face that bears an unmistakable seal of distinction. It reminds you instantly of Chantrey’s bust of the greatest of the sons of men. The same pure oval outline, the arched eyebrows, the piled-up dome of forehead stretching outward from the eyes, until the glossy black hair, seeing the hopelessness of disputing the field, has retired discouraged to the back of the head. This is Emilio Castelar, the inspired tribune of Spain. This people is so given to exaggerated phases of compliment, that the highest-colored adjectives have lost their power. They have exhausted their lexicons in speaking of Castelar, but in this instance I would be inclined to say that exaggeration was wellnigh impossible. It is true that his speech does not move with the powerful convincing momentum of the greatest English and American orators. It is possible that its very brilliancy detracts somewhat from its effect upon a legislative body. When you see a Toledo blade all damaskeened with frondage and flowers and stories of the gods, you are apt to think it less deadly than one glittering in naked blueness from hilt to point. Yet the splendid sword is apt to be of the finest temper. Whatever may be said of his enduring influence upon legislation, it seems to me there can be no difference of opinion in regard to his transcendent oratorical gifts. There is something almost superhuman in his delivery. He is the only man I have ever seen who produces, in very truth, those astounding effects which I have always thought the inventions of poets and the exaggerations of biography. Robertson, speaking of Pitt’s oratory, said, “ It was not the torrent of Demosthenes, nor the splendid conflagration of Tully.” This ceases to be an unmeaning metaphor when you have heard Castelar. His speech is like a torrent in its inconceivable fluency, like a raging fire in its brilliancy of color and terrible energy of passion. Never for an instant is the wonderful current of declamation checked by the pauses, the hesitations, the deliberations that mark all Anglo-Saxon debate. An entire oration will be delivered with precisely the fluent energy which a veteran actor exhibits in his most passionate scenes ; and when you consider that this is not conned beforehand, but is struck off instantly in the very heat and spasm of utterance, it seems little short of inspiration. The most elaborate filing of a fastidious rhetorician could not produce phrases of more exquisite harmony, antitheses more sharp and shining, metaphors more neatly fitting, all uttered with a distinct rapidity that makes the despair of stenographers. His memory is prodigious and under perfect discipline. He has the world’s history at his tongues’ end. No fact is too insignificant to be retained nor too stale to do service.
His action is also most energetic and impassioned. It would be considered redundant in a Teutonic country. If you do not understand Spanish, there is something almost insane in his gesticulation. I remember a French diplomat who came to see him, on one of his happiest days, and who, after looking intently at the orator for a half-hour trying to see what he was saying, said at last in an injured tone, “ Mais ! c’est un polichinelle, celui!á.”It had not occurred to me that he had made a gesture. The whole man was talking from his head to his feet.
Finally, as we cannot stay even with Castelar all night, his greatest and highest claim to our admiration and regard is that his enormous talents have been consistently devoted from boyhood to this hour to the cause of political and spiritual freedom. He is now only thirty-two years of age, but he was an orator at sixteen. He harangued the mobs of 1854 with a dignity and power that contrasted grotesquely with his boyish figure and rosy face. During all these eventful years he has not for one moment faltered in his devotion to liberal ideas. In poverty, exile, and persecution, as well as amid the intoxicating fumes of flattery and favor, he has kept his faith unsullied. With his great gifts, he might command anything from the government, as the price of his support. But he preserves his austere independence, living solely upon his literary labor and his modest salary as Professor of History in the University.
Beside him is Figueras, the Parliamentary leader of the Republicans, a tall, large-framed man, with a look of lazy power. He is a fine lawyer, an able and ready debater, and a man of great energy of character. He is, perhaps, more regarded and respected by the monarchical side of the house than any other Republican. Pi y Margall is another strong and hard hitter of the left. He has a hoarse, husky voice, a ragged and grizzled beard, and grave, ascetic-looking square spectacles. If you met him in Broadway you would call him a professor of mathematics in a young and unsuccessful Universalist college.
The centre of the hall is occupied by the deputies of the Liberal Union. Immediately under the clock sits Rios Rosas, the leading orator of that party, an iron-gray man of middle age, an energetic and effective speaker; Silvela, a tall, handsome, attorney-like person, reposing from the fatigues of the afternoon ; he has made a great speech to-day, and may have to make another before midnight; Juan Valera, the courtly Academician ; Lopez de Ayala, who has had such a success as a poet and such a failure as a statesman, and who looks like the romantic Spaniards of young ladies’ sketch-books. Swinging farther round the horse-shoe, you find the compact phalanx of Prim’s supporters, the Progresistas and Monarchical Democrats, now fused into one solid organization called Radicals. Among them are the generals of the Revolution, Cordova, Izquierdo, and Peralta, and the white-haired veteran conspirator Milaus del Bosch (say Bosk, if you please), who has been in every insurrection since he was a boy. He is a gallant, hearty, prodigal fellow, always giving and never gaining, and so was approaching an impecunious old age, when suddenly a few weeks ago an old officer whom he only slightly knew died, like an uncle in a fifth act, and left him a large fortune ; and there was not probably a man in Madrid who was not glad to hear it. Another noticeable figure is that of Don Pascual Madoz, the tenacious advocate of the election of Espartero to the crown. I have never seen a man who looked so old. He has no hair whatever on his face, head, or brows. His pink skull shines like varnished parchment. He sits ordinarily with his head tipped torpidly over on his breast, as if lost in recollections of the time of his contemporary Adrian. But, in fact, he is still an able and vigorous politician. Near him lies sprawled over half a bench the enormous bulk of Coronel y Ortiz, whom you would call fifty from his waist and his gray hairs, but who is really but six - and - twenty, barely the legal age of a voter in Spain.
The handsomest man in the house, the enfant gâté of the Radicals, is the young Subsecretary of the Interior, who will succeed Becerra as Colonial Secretary, Moret y Prendergast. He is six feet high, built like a trapeze performer, with a classical, clear-cut face and like all men of great persona beauty, he has the most easy and ele gant manners. He was a comrade and associate of Castilar before the Revolution, but has since given in his adhesion to the monarchy, and is one ol their most ready and brilliant speakers. They usually put him into the lists against his eloquent friend. But there is no resemblance between the men. Moret possesses in the highest degree the Southern fluency and ease of diction. His delivery is also most graceful and pleasing. But he speaks utterly without passion or conviction. His talk is all, as Mr. Carlyle would say, “from the teeth outward.” A speech from him is as clear and easy-gushing as the jet from a garden-fountain, full of bright lights and prismatic flashes, but it is also as cold and purposeless.
It will require a moment to explain why there is such a gathering of the clans to-night. The bill which now occupies the attention of the chamber is of the character which your true Spaniard loathes and scorns. It is a bill for raising money. Of course a parliament of office-holders recognize the necessity of the treasury’s being filled. But they usually prefer to let the Finance Minister have his own way about filling it, theirs being the more seductive task of emptying it. So that financial matters are usually discussed in the inspiring presence of empty benches.
A few days ago Mr. Figuerola, whom his friends call the Spanish Necker, because, as Owen Meredith once observed, it was neck or nothing with their treasury, introduced a bill for the relief of the government and the agonizing municipal councils, authorizing the government to negotiate the bonds remaining over, of the loan of 1868, and those lying in the Bank of Deposits as security for the payment of municipal, individual, and provincial taxes ; and also to make an operation of credit upon the mines of Almaden and Rio Tinto, and the salt-works of Torre Vieja. This was, it is true, a terrible proposition, — like a carpenter pawning his tools, or a lawyer his library; but it was positively nothing unusual in Spanish finance. Its whole history consists in these desperate authorizations, trembling always on the brink of bankruptcy. You will find in the Diplomatic Correspondence of 1842 a statement of a battle wonderfully like the one we are to witness here to-night. Washington Irving writes that the Ministry resolved to take their stand “ on the great questions of financial reform. Calatrava, the Minister of Finance, brought forward his budget, showing a deficit for 1843 of about twenty millions of dollars, to remedy which he proposed, among other measures, that the Cortes should authorize the government to contract for a loan of thirty millions of dollars, hypothecating all the revenues and contributions of the state.”
This is the third time Mr. Figuerola has come before the Cortes asking them to bandage their eyes and give him the keys of the national wealth. In the first days of the Revolution he asked to be authorized to contract a loan, on his own terms, for fifty million dollars. This was to be the last. Shortly afterwards another demand was made for an operation on tobacco and other important revenues. This was also granted. And now, at this alarmingly short interval, comes this third summons to the nation to roll up its sleeve and be bled, without explanations.
The most remarkable feature to foreign eyes, in all these authorizations, is that no man in Spain but the Minister of Hacienda knows how much these various loans produce. There exists in Paris a singular and mysterious corporation called the Bank of Paris, which conducts the financial operations of the Spanish government. The process is said to be this : the government, having obtained its authorization, applies to the Bank of Paris to place the loan. It places in the vaults of the Bank a sufficient quantity of its own bonds on hand to serve as security for the Bank in the operation. The Bank puts the loan on the market, and gets its commission. It rehypothecates the hypothecated bonds, and gets a commission. It buys the bonds on its own account, and pays itself a commission for the sale ; it sells them again to its own customers, being thus forced reluctantly to pocket another commission. To sustain the weight of the loan in a dull market, it is forced to borrow money from itself at a high rate of interest; and every such ingenious operation results in this self-sacrificing corporation increasing its risks and perils in that celestial needle’s-eye, by the additional bulk of another commission. The sum which came to the government from that loan of a hundred millions is as profoundly unknown as “ what song the sirens sang.” Some say twenty-six, and there are evil tongues that assert that not nineteen millions ever entered the treasury.
Still, all this is quite regular in Spanish politics, and no party hitherto has ever shown a disposition to abolish a convenient custom from which each profits while in power. But to-night the government is evidently greatly alarmed in regard to the passage of the bill. Every available man is in his place. The President of the Council has for several days past been using his whole arsenal of persuasion of threats and promises, but not successfully. The opposition is of the most kind and courteous character that can be imagined. The amendment presented by the Liberal Union, and defended to-day in a long and powerful speech by Silvela, is apparently as innocent and reasonable as possible. It merely provides that the conversion of the securities in the Bank of Deposits shall be at the option of the municipal councils, and of individuals, to whom they belong ; that the mines of the state shall not be themselves hypothecated, but only their products.
It would seem impossible to reject so reasonable and moderate a proposition. But the government has determined to fight its battle on this amendment. It has announced that it will make the vote a Cabinet question, standing or falling with the bill. The Union Liberal, on the contrary, protest that nothing is further from their minds than to attack the government; that this is a friendly amendment which the government ought to accept, throwing over the Minister of Finance if necessary, who is leading the country to perdition. This was the burden of Silvela’s dexterous speech this afternoon. It was not a question of confidence in the Ministry ; it was a question of prerogative in the Cortes. The country had a right to know what was done with its money. It could not give up the right of control in its own affairs : the deputies could not continue forever throwing the whole national wealth into an ever-yawning crater.
He was answered with great energy by Mr. Figuerola, who contended that the condition of the country was so critical that the operations for which authority was requested must be made solid and at once, to save the national credit, and to begin the era of financial reform. Ruiz Gomez also defended the report of the committee, and, evidently fresh from the reading of a Congressional Globe of thirty or forty years ago, he rebuked Mr. Castelar for his apathy in financial matters, informing him that to-day in the United States Adams, Jackson, Clay, and Madison are much more interested in questions of tariff and slavery compromise than in Michael Angelo and the Parthenon.
The session closed for dinner and cigars, and opened again about ten o’clock. There is no longer any doubt about the serious nature of the crisis. In spite of all the fair words used, the fight is to be a final and desperate one. The Liberal Union, by adhering to its amendment after the government has declared its intention to stand or fall with the original bill, has placed itself in opposition. It is useless for it to declare that its attitude is friendly, and that only considerations of patriotism have forced it to take this position. It did the same thing when it was in power, and would do it again to-morrow. All parties in Spain talk of retrenchment and reform, but all adopt a policy of expedients and makeshifts as soon as they are seated on the Blue Bench.
Every one feels that the hollow truce of the last year and a half is over ; that the coalition of the three parties that made the Revolution, the Progresista, the Liberal Union, and the Democrats, is nearing its agony. It is a wonder that it has lasted so long, surviving the successive shocks of universal suffrage, freedom of worship, and the establishment of individual rights. It seems a marvel to us that the same party could so long have contained Martos the abolitionist, and Romero Robledo the advocate of slavery, Echegaray the rationalist, and Ortiz the ultramontane, men who worship reason, and men who worship the Pope, men who insist that human rights are above law, and men who believe in the divine right of kings. But the powerful cohesion of private and party interests have kept them together so far, and it seems as if these same exigencies were to sunder them to-night.
On one side is the government, with its faithful cohort of Radicals ; on the other the Liberal Union, the conservative element of the late coalition, which has become convinced that it can no longer control the policy of the majority, and has therefore apparently resolved to destroy the majority, and trust to its political shrewdness and aptitude to build up some advantageous combination from the ruins ; the Republicans, who can consistently support the Silvela amendment, as it merely embodies their own principle of parliamentary control ; and the Carlists, the partisans of the absolute royal power, who strike hands with their enemies purely from opposition to the government : a most heterogeneous accidental compound, and one on which no parliamentary government could be founded, if it should succeed in overthrowing this Cabinet.
The session was opened by a speech having no reference to the question. Mr. Puig y Llagostera, the new deputy from Catalonia, was to have made an interpellation in the afternoon, but was cleverly thrown out by the ruling of the President, and his speech postponed until the evening. It was a dangerous experiment for any man to try to gain the attention of an assembly in such a state of tense expectancy. But this brilliant, wild Catalan feared nothing, and, as the result showed, had nothing to fear. He made one of the most remarkable speeches, in severity, in feverish eloquence, in naïve paradox, that was ever addressed to an assembly claiming to be deliberative. It was an attack upon the government all along the line. Whatever was, was wrong.
He is a large manufacturer, employs a great number of operatives, and is a man of limited education, but great natural talents. He believes, as many Catalans do, that Spain cannot exist without a high protective tariff. He therefore thinks that Mr. Figuerola, who leans toward free trade, is the evil genius of the country ; and so when young Paul Bosch, who is son-in-law to the Minister of Finance, came down from Madrid, in the innocence of his heart, to be elected deputy, the fiery Catalan entered the lists against him, and, supported by Republican votes, was elected. He is in no true sense a Republican ; it would puzzle him to define his politics. He wants food cheap for the benefit of his operatives, and grain dear for the benefit of farmers. He recognizes the difficulties of the problem, and calls loudly on the government to solve it.
I have never seen anything so like Gwynplaine in the House of Lords, — this earnest, brilliant, honest man, with his whole heart in his words, coming up from his fellow-workers, grimed with the smoke of his factories, to deliver to the fainéant gentlemen of the Cortes the message of the toilers and the sufferers.
The beginning of his speech was unique. He begins by resigning his charge of deputy. He has come to give them an hour of candor, and will then go back to his people.
He has not come, he says, to ask the government questions about the state of the country. He has come to tell them ; — in one word, misery. “You, my lords Ministers, may think this exaggeration. I tell you, while you are sitting comfortably in your jewelled palaces, the majority of the Spanish people have no clothes to wear nor bread to eat. Among the working classes poverty is becoming famine ; in what you call good society, the paupers in frock-coats are the majority. Do not judge from Madrid, with its four armies, soldiers, office-holders, pensioners, and harlots, who all have enough and to spare. Go into the provinces and see the people, who beg in shame or starve in pride.
“ And to this hungry people Mr. Figuerola says, for their consolation, that ‘the grass is beginning to grow.’ For the gentlemen of the budget, I doubt not the grass is growing rank and green; but for the country, Mr. Figuerola, it is the graveyard grass that is growing ! ”
He went on to show how the misery of the land was due to the bad management of the treasury, leaving industry and agriculture without sufficient protection. “For want of corn-tax the kingdom is flooded with the products of the Danube ; and the Spanish farmer perishes in poverty among his grainsacks. It is not the blighting winds nor the mouldering rains, farmers of Spain ! that rob you of the fruit of your toil ; it is the law ; that law imposed by a school of sciolists, who have never shed one drop of sweat in your furrows, but who devour your first-fruits ; who spend Spanish money and eat foreign bread ; who preach honor for Spaniards and profit for strangers.”
Mr. Figuerola in this matter had sinned against light and knowledge. The speaker had come from Catalonia long ago to warn him, but he would not be convinced. “When I showed him how the decline of production was leaving a surplus of intelligent labor which would thus be driven into emigration, depopulating the farming regions of Spain, he answered cynically, ‘ Let them emigrate: we will have seven million Spaniards left.’
“ Why will General Prim make a Cabinet question over a Minister capable of uttering such a blasphemy ? If it were not that he throws into the balance his great personality, who supposes the majority would vote to fling away the last that remains to us of credit and bread, the last rag that covers the nakedness of this wretched nation ?
“ The people clamor for economies, but what care you for that ? You are more royalist than the king. You vote the state more than it asks. You all have a cover at the feast. If you eat and do not pay, what care you if the people pay and do not eat ? Not only in your hall of sessions, but in your lobbies and corridors, I am shocked and grieved: I seek everywhere for patriotism, and find only an inordinate greed of office.”
At this point the noise and confusion in the hall became so great that the orator was compelled to pause for a moment in his denunciation. Such language is never heard in a European congress, where the most exquisite courtesy of expression always characterizes the most heated debates. This Scythian oratory was new to the conscript fathers. The President intervened and severely rebuked Mr. Puig y Llagostera. He went on with renewed vehemence, which occasioned renewed tumult, and finally he ceased to worry the sensitive office-holders, and returned to the state of the country.
Like a true Catalan he had his word to say of Cuba, and it was of course in praise of the brutal and bloody volunteers. He despised and abhorred all discussion of reform for the colonies, and cried, “ Perish principles and save the colonies ! ”
He thought the interregnum was a source of woes unnumbered, and said, “ Let us get out of it, at any cost, — with Montpensier, with Don Carlos, with Prim, with the Devil, if you like, — but be quick about it” : which certainly showed a spirit above party. He summed up in a few nervous words the wants of the country : security for capital, labor for the workingman, a field for intelligence, development of the public wealth, —this was government. Less speeches and better laws ; less office-seeking and more production ; less clubs and more workshops ; less beggars and more bread ; in a word, less politics and more government.
This speech, wild and illogical as it was, profoundly and disagreeably impressed the house. Figuerola, who was reserving his strength for the attack in front, refused to meet this flank movement, and his friend Echegaray answered for him. He made a sensible reply, showing that it was not the function of a government to abolish poverty or create riches, and that, after all, the picture drawn by Mr. Puig was darker than the facts justified.
To which the Catalan orator rejoined, in a graphic metaphor, that no doubt the situation looked very bright to those who stood in the radiance of the treasury, but far off, in the darkness, the country was weeping in misery.
After this exciting interlude, the Chamber returned to the evening’s serious work. Mr. Figuerola rose to complete the speech he had begun before dinner, and made one of those skilful arguments that so often confuse the listener, until he imagines he is convinced. Although the Minister knew his political existence depended upon the issue of this night, he was as cool and passionless, and as exquisitely courteous in his references to the perfect candor, good faith, and patriotism of his adversaries, as if it were the weight of Saturn’s rings that was under discussion.
He was followed by Rivero, Minister of the Interior, who defended the Cabinet in general from the vigorous attack made upon them the night before by Canovas del Castillo, the sole representative in the Chamber of the partisans of the late queen. While Rivero is not deficient in those chivalrous civilities to opponents, which mark all Spanish debate, he is an honest and square adversary, and makes a speech which cannot be misunderstood. There seems to be a singular affectation, among Spanish politicians, of denouncing the status quo ; of lamenting the evils which exist, and promising something better to - morrow. The monarchical deputies appear to consider it a sort of treason to their unknown king to be contented before he comes. We hear everywhere and every day jeremiads over the interregnum. But the fact is, that Spain has rarely had so good a government as this truce of monarchy. Rivero is the only member of the government who appears to have the pluck to say this. To-night, after neatly disposing of Mr. Canovas’s pretensions to sit in judgment on the government of a Revolution he does not recognize, he goes on to say : “ Gentlemen, there is one phrase I hear continually, ' Madrid is tranquil, but the provinces are not.’ I confess I myself entered the Gobernacion under this impression. But I have not encountered, — I say it frankly before this assembly, — any element of disorder which would not be easy to destroy completely, with a good administrative system, with a loyal and sincere observance of the principles contained in the Constitution, with an active and vigorous execution of the laws. I believe and say this, though this should be the last night I should occupy this place ; I believe that public order in Spain is by no means so uncertain or so easily disturbed as some fear and many pretend to fear.” These are truer and more honest words than have often been spoken by a Spanish Minister of the Interior. The traditional custom has been to magnify the office, to represent the people as a dangerous beast, who must be kept carefully chained and muzzled.
Silvela made his closing argument, which was chiefly significant for the pleading earnestness with which he strove to impress it upon the government that his amendment was their best friend, and would be the salvation of the Revolution. This did not create much interest. The deputies were growing tired of the long skirmishing. It was now after one o’clock. Every one wanted to hear Prim, and vote.
The Marquis of Perales, Vice-President, said, as Silvela took his seat, “ The President of the Council of Ministers has the word.”
Prim slowly rose, holding his eyeglasses in his gloved hands. His face was as colorless and impassive as that of a mummy. There was a rustle of movement, as the house, now wide awake, bent forward to catch his first words. They were full of soldierly bluntness : “ I am not going to discuss this law. I know nothing about these matters, and never talk about things I do not understand. I have full confidence in the Minister of Hacienda, and so believe this law is a good one. This opinion is shared by my companions in the government.”
Nothing could be more simple and frank than these words ; yet they were deeply pondered and perfectly fitted to the occasion. No art could have improved them. They at once enlisted the sympathy of his followers, and set an example of party discipline. He continued, expressing his inability to understand the cause of this attack from the Union Liberal : “I can understand the opposition of Mr. Tutan ; the Republicans desire the tall of the present government and that of Mr. Muzquiz also, for the Carlists wish the disappearance of this Cabinet and this Chamber ; for the same reason I was not surprised at the assault of Mr. Canovas.” Here Iris voice and manner, which had been as mild as an undertaker’s, suddenly changed, and he said with great dignity and solemnity, turning to the Unionist fraction, “ But I cannot understand — I declare it with the sincerity of an honest man — the attitude of the gentlemen of the Union Liberal, because, though my distinguished friend, Mr. Silvela, has clothed his opposition with beautiful and elegant forms, still, opposition, and of the rudest, it is, which his Lordship makes, not only to Mr. Figuerola, but to the whole government.” He continued for some time, showing the disorganizing and disastrous results that would follow the success of the Unionist attack, declaring that the Cabinet would immediately resign in a body. He recounted the efforts he had made to prevent the rupture ; and his voice and utterance had something almost pathetic as he narrated his fruitless endeavors to find some ground of agreement. But as he closed, a sort of transformation came over him. He seemed to grow several inches taller. He stood straight as a column, and his voice rang out like a trumpet over the hall : “ They present us the battle. There remains no more for me to say than, Radicals! defend yourselves! Let those who love me, follow me ! ”
What tremendous power there lies in the speech of a man of action ! If any deputy but Prim had said these words, how coldly they would have fallen ! But from him they were so many flashes of lightning. The house was ablaze in a second. The Radicals rose, cheering frantically. It was a battle-field speech, and had its deeply calculated effect. The phalanx was fused into one man.
As the cheering died away, Topete was seen to rise from his seat by Prim and take him by the hand in sign of farewell. The gallant sailor uttered a word of energetic protest, too low to be heard in the tumult, and then passed over to his friends of the Liberal Union. It was now their turn to burst out in a shout of defiance. They surrounded the Admiral, embracing and welcoming him, For some minutes this wild agitation reigned in the Chamber. There was an excited tremor in the voice and the bell of the President, as he rang and shouted his unavailing appeals for order.
At last a comparative calm was restored, but the ground-swell of emotion prevented any further serious discussion. Silvela spoke again, deprecating the soldierly rashness with which, as he said, General Prim had made this question a matter of life and death. The President of the Council responded, this time with admirable coolness, affecting great surprise at the effect his words had created, but reiterating his statement of the allimportant character of the vote. The members, now thoroughly aroused and eager for the fray, began to clamor á votar !
The voting began in an intense silence. Each member rises in turn in his place, gives his own name, and votes si or no. As the vote went sweeping around the red plush semicircle, it was so close that the coolest hearts beat faster. But the last ayes are gathered in on the Federal rnountain, where Castelar, Figueras, and Louis Blanc are enthroned, and they are not enough by six. The Cabinet is saved, and the coalition is broken.
The power of Prim is consolidated anew for the present. He has successfully withstood an attack from a combination embracing every possible shade of opposition, and founded upon a just vindication of parliamentary prerogative. It is scarcely within the limits of possibility to conceive that Unionists and Carlists can plant themselves again on a platform where the Republicans can consistently aid them. In the hope of destroying the Ministry, the reactionary parties for one instant seized the weapon of right ; and the progressive Monarchists, to preserve their organization, availed themselves of the discipline of absolutism. People talk for a day or two of the chilling majority of six as being a virtual government defeat ; but it can be more correctly regarded as an attack made by the opposition in the best conceivable conditions of success, received and repulsed by the government at the weakest point of its defences.
The incident shows a positive progress in Spanish politics. The coalition which has thus fallen to pieces resembled in some respects that aggregation of parties that drove Espartero from the Regency in the height of his power, a quarter of a century ago. Then, however, there was so little cohesion in the mass of conspirators, that the coalition only survived the victory a week or two. The country lived in anarchy until the queen was declared of age, at thirteen years, and Mr. Olozaga was placed at the head of the government. For five days there was a deep breath of relief and public confidence. But the Camarilla of the Palace poisoned the mind of the baby sovereign against the Premier, and induced her to make a solemn charge against that grave and courtly statesman, that he had locked her up in her despacho, and by physical violence forced her to sign a decree which he wanted ; an utterly absurd and fantastic falsehood, but one which broke up the government, and brought into power the vulgar despot, Gonzalez Bravo, — a convincing proof of the precocious corruption of the queen and the terrible disorganization of parties.
On the other hand, we see this later coalition lasting in something like harmony nearly two years : working together in the formation of a Constitution freer than that of any European monarchy, and at last broken by the secession of the more conservative fraction, who were aghast at the apparently serious march of reform undertaken by the majority. They choose with great skill and judgment the most favorable battle-ground. They make an issue upon a violation of a just prerogative of the Cortes, where they are sure of the aid of the always consistent and uncompromising Republicans. The attack is made with vigor and prudence. But in the face of this formidable combination, the government has obtained cohesion enough to gain a substantial victory.
It gains by the very secession. It is now able to move forward with unshackled feet in the path of progress. It is free to seek its true inspiration in the ranks of the democracy. It may now be sure that a combination of plunder is a mere rope of sand, and the requirements of the time can only be met by parties founded on the principles of practical liberty.
John Hay.