Part 3 — SPAIN: WHAT IT WAS AND WHAT IT IS.

A nation vegetating on old memories; a people for two centuries priest-ridden, just beginning to awaken and show some signs of the enlightenment of the age; a government liable to change every twenty-four hours; an empty treasury shifting from one to another incapable ministry; and, above all, a ridiculous pretension and holding to such an Old World phrase as national honor—such is the ordinary run of opinion on Spain. What is it coming to? What is its destiny? Has it a destiny in these busy, practical days? Or is its life played out long ago, and the nation simply drifting downwards into the yawning gulf of insignificance where many another has been swallowed up?

Have Catholics an interest in the question?

Yesterday, when mention was made of Spain, the enlightened world lifted up its eyes and hands in pious protestation against such an outrage on our nineteenth century of civilization. A superstitious race given to the worshipping of graven images, hoodwinked by the priests, those inveterate enemies of progress; no free-will among them; no understanding; nothing but memory. To-day all is changed. The dawn long delayed of enlightenment has come at last to the unhappy land—has come accompanied by the usual signs. Churches have been rifled, the sanctuary has been desecrated, the Jesuits have been scattered, nuns and monks have been robbed of their homes and driven naked into the world, blood has flowed freely, murder has been done. So, to-day the world smiles, and rubs its hands, and hopes better things for Spain.

That it was a great nation we all acknowledge, and the title is a true one. It was not alone a mighty nation; those buried under the Eastern sands were mighty nations, yet their workings in this world were as barren of fruit as the shifting covering that has hidden them away, without an oasis to redeem their barrenness. China might be called a mighty nation, but it has walled itself in from the world by the most narrow-minded and selfish policy, and we have had to fight our way through good and evil up to our present standard without a helping hand from it. Russia is a mighty nation, and we look anxiously to the development of its vast power, but up to the present its only effect on the world has been that of brute strength. But Spain has been pre-eminently a great nation; that is, a nation that has done much for its own and others’ development, in all that can make peoples sound, intelligent, prosperous, and happy.

Looking back at its history as far as we can look back, we find the same characteristics in the race as we find to-day; above all, that intense, all-absorbing nationality which has kept it unmixed and unconquered. Hannibal courted its alliance; the Roman failed ever to subdue it thoroughly. Great stubborn resistances to the Empress of the World stand out now and then in clear relief from that dim background—awful sieges wonderfully sustained, where the women play an equal part with the men. We shall always find these Spanish women leading the van in the hour of their country’s danger. The victories gained over them resembled the victory of Pyrrhus. The Romans went and the Moors came, and fastened on the heart of the kingdom, populating and flourishing there, sucking out its life. They built their cities and their palaces in the fairest spots in the land. Powerful, warlike, rich, with immense resources, they laughed at the handful of men, kingless, skulking among rocks, and starving for liberty. But that handful will not surrender what is their own while one arm can be raised to defend it. They are true to one another as Spaniards and as Catholics now; for a new element is in them binding them more firmly than the very blood that is common to their veins—religion, the religion of Christ, which they have seized upon with all their passionate nature, never to relinquish. Inch by inch the Moors are driven back over the sea. They were invaded again by a more terrible foe than all—more terrible even than France in her deep distress has lately seen. Bonaparte had drained the country of its armies, had emptied its coffers, and taken away its king, all under the shadow of friendship and alliance. When he held it thus powerless in his hands, he sent in his armies, and impudently set his brother on the throne. Kingless, moneyless, defenceless as they were, the people rose up, the women again leading the van, and the priests inflaming all. Bonaparte was driven out. The priests, for all their hoodwinking, can be good patriots, it seems. The London Times, the mouthpiece of the enlightenment of the age, certainly no great friend to Spaniards and Catholics, contrasted the conduct of France during the late invasion with that of Spain. France, in her sorest straits, was never so hard pushed as Spain when the first Napoleon entered; yet a nation of over 30,000,000 could not rid themselves of half a million. There was no Carthagena, no Saguntum, no Saragossa—no approach to such. And the Times confessed that France failed because she possessed neither the patriotism nor the religious enthusiasm of the Spaniards. Such examples has Spain given to the world of the purest patriotism, the first element of greatness in a nation; of a self-reliance that, when all seems lost, will not look without for aid, but to itself.

She has not ceased her working here. In no department has she been backward. Science owes her much. Literature is enriched by her authors. The inspirations of Murillo are the embodiment of all that our religion can feel in its deepest moments; before his canvas, the Christian prays, the infidel cannot scoff. She has given soldiers of the noblest type; statesmen the most benevolent and enlightened. The Spanish constitution in itself is from days remote admirable for equipoise and justice. In England they are just approaching the Spanish marriage laws. A Spanish merchant will tell you that for the generality of commercial questions he is his own lawyer, so clear and well-defined is the law.

What do we Catholics owe to Spain?

First of all, that high example of unswerving faith and devotion to the Holy See through ages of evil report and good report. The great heart of the nation is not moved by events that will come under our notice after. She has not only given a host of theological writers, but, what is still better, a host of theological actors—notably the Order of St. Dominic and the Society of Jesus, the names of which are enough to recall our debt.

To the Old World she opened up a New. Here Spain had a mission that is rarely given to nations. She failed, though the monarch sent priests to accompany the soldiers, to temper the conquest of the sword by that of the cross. How well the warriors of Christ demeaned themselves, our Bancroft and Prescott tell us.

She failed; but who shall cast the first stone at her? That nation only which has subdued another by Christian love and the weapon of the cross—a phenomenon that has not yet appeared even in these blessed days.

We hear much of the cruelty of these Spanish settlers, of their selfishness, of their greed of gold.

We must make a little allowance for the days in which they lived. Men were untutored then; peace congresses (save the mark!) were unknown; an Alabama case would either have been let alone or settled by the sword long ere it could have grown into a mere talking difficulty; men did not consult lawyers on the nice distinctions of meum and tuum. The Spaniards landed, and held their own by cruelty, oppression, and rapine, no doubt. We, with all our enlightenment, have followed their example pretty faithfully; except that, for men like the saintly Las Casas, we despatched an agent that worked a speedy conversion—fire-water. We have taken root here and grown up, and are a great nation, spreading out in all directions, wealthy, prosperous, enlightened, with civilization at our finger-ends, and Bibles willy-nilly in every one of our schools. Yes, we are a decided improvement on the Spaniards. But a hundred years ago there existed a race in this country to whom the land that we tread upon belonged. Where is that race now? A wretched remnant of it scowling and prowling on our outskirts; we are killing them off. We heard of them the other day joining in the great hunt. The most enterprising and powerful of our journals, one that has fitted out a purely benevolent expedition to Africa, sent its correspondent down to record it all. We had an “idyl of the plains”; the course of our great enlightenment and progress was drawn in fanciful colors, with this correspondent for central figure, riding for miles and miles under the stars to tell us at our breakfasts of the exact position of a soldier throwing an ornament round the neck of a savage maiden, and the evident appreciation the savages exhibited of champagne.

Spain failed in her mission, great and glorious as it was. Have we succeeded better? Has England, in India, or Tasmania, or wherever she set her foot?

Gold brought its own curse. When wealth comes unasked, few men will labor. The “Eldorado” filled the dreams and stopped the life of the Spaniards. One by one her rich possessions dropped from the parent nation, till Cuba was the only one left, and Cuba wishes to go also.

She has become a second-rate power in Europe, if so high—the kingdom “on whose dominions the sun never set.”

And here, with this glance at her past history to call to mind what she was, what she has achieved, the truly great elements that were always in her, we turn to look at her as she is; to consider her present bearing on the church, for we Catholics must always look at all things with a Catholic eye, knowing, as we do, that our religion is the one religion upon which the salvation of this world hangs; that, if the world is to be saved by us, we can never put our faith upon the shelf and enter the world as worldlings. The Spirit of God must permeate and pervade all people, all places, all things, at all times; and when that is accomplished, and not before, then will the world be saved.

Spain groaned under the rule of Isabella, or rather under the rule of her rulers. She was a woman far “more sinned against than sinning.” We are apt too often to blame the victim for the circumstances which make the victim. From her infancy a tool in the hands of unprincipled men; forced to marry a man utterly worthless in every respect; almost without one true friend, without a soul for her woman’s heart to cling to. We accuse her of all the evils created, fostered, encouraged by a host of powerful men, who used her as a chess-piece; while she stood, their game was safe. The revolution more than smouldered; but O’Donnell, at once a statesman and a soldier, kept it down. Narvaez, crafty and bold, succeeded him, and in turn went. These men, particularly the latter, in striking at their own foes, left a bitter legacy of hatred and revenge to the queen. What all foresaw came to pass—the last rising which ousted her. Prim came in; the nation’s destiny was at last in its own hands; now for the millennium.

Prim commenced it—a likely man for such a purpose. A bold, unscrupulous adventurer, whose chief virtue was his reckless bravery; no great talker; not a man who would astonish you by the wisdom of his words, but quick to decide, speedy to execute; a very soldier whose “voice was in his sword”—such was Prim. He found himself adored by the soldiers, glorified by the people. He did not care for the latter: when they wished to tear the crown from his cap on his entry into Malaga, he would not let them; he declared himself in plain words for monarchy from the beginning. He found the cortes split up into parties. Many for Don Carlos, a strong body, who if not crushed would have their king; so Prim resolved to crush them. A few for Montpensier; another few for Don Alfonso, the queen’s son; neither worth bothering about, Prim let them alone. A small compact party of republicans, very ably led; nearly all young, enthusiastic, lawyers many of them, excellent speakers, excellent fighters at a pinch, too. This was a dangerous party, who had been most instrumental in putting Prim where he was. He dared not turn round on them at once, the people were still armed. He coquetted with them. They were young, and many unfledged, eager to try their lungs, fond of the sound of their voices. Spain should be governed only as Spain wished; she should have a model constitution; freedom of the person, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of everything. No more conscriptions, only a few more thousands just to enable the army to quell those troublesome Carlists. He threw them a constitution, a model indeed in its construction, fit for Utopia, but scarcely for the wild spirits then raging in Spain. He let them wrangle over that, and turned himself to the army. He had always been popular with the soldiers; he moved everybody up a grade; by this means he created all the colonels, and the army was his. With this weapon secure in his grasp he could beat them all, and he did. He played them off, one against the other, in the cortes; he knew, split up as they were, the elements too opposed to coalesce, they would never agree about any single thing or any single person; he suggested this and he suggested that; if they would not take his suggestions, that was their fault. One thing was clear, they must support him, or anarchy would ensue. The Carlists left the chamber to fight. Precisely what Prim wanted; he had encouraged it, in fact; the sooner, the better for him, as he could the more easily crush them. He did so, cruelly and mercilessly. In the meantime, he was all honey to the republicans. But at last they began to see that they had been hoodwinked; that there was no hope of a republic from Prim; that the monarchy they hated would come in again, and all their efforts prove fruitless. Prim demanded the arms of the people—the arms which had been distributed to enable him to crush the monarchy. The republicans in their turn left the chamber to fight; and well they fought, too, against the overwhelming forces that Prim sent to quell them; for no half measures would do for Juan Prim. Those men who rose and fought so tenaciously at Cadiz, at Jerez, at Malaga, Valencia, had been well schooled beforehand by the preachers of the age. “You are poor, and your children will be poor after you. The labor of your hands goes to dress the fine ladies of the rich; to fatten lazy priests, who do nothing for a living; to set those brave gentlemen on horseback, who think themselves made of other flesh and blood than yours. We will change all that when the queen is driven out. We will all be equal, and do equal work or no work. Our men are men as theirs are; our women are women also.”

The queen was driven away; the friars, and the Jesuits, and the nuns banished. The government seized upon their houses and what was in them; of course it was not robbery when the government took them. Still the poor were not a penny the richer. These plausible doctrines had seized upon their simple minds. It was something worth fighting for, and they fought. No Paris barricades were ever defended with half the fury and obstinacy displayed by those Andalusians—the mountaineers and villagers whose fathers and grandfathers had harassed, surrounded, and captured a force of 4000 or more, under one of the First Napoleon’s generals. Still, we hear of none of those outrages at which the world sickened lately in Paris. “Aqui nadie se roba caballeros”—“Gentlemen, no one robs here,” was the first cry at Cadiz. A commandant of the forces was struck down in the midst of the revolutionists by a shot. They knew him well, and that he was going to fight against them; yet they were the first men to take him from the street and care for his wounds. There is all that is noble, generous, and faithful in the heart of this people, which it only requires a wise government to draw out.

They were beaten on all sides. They dared not rise in Madrid, for Prim kept his forces there, as a centre, menacing the country. In the midst of all this distraction, we see one flash of the old spirit that, however it might split against itself, was one against a common foe. Cuba saw its chance, and, though many concessions had been made, it would have liberty at once. Prim had quite enough to do at home; his hands were full with Carlists and republicans. We lent our sanction to the Cuban claims, with an after-eye to our own interests; and our minister made some representations that never quite came to light. Prim made no answer to them, at least in words. But, notwithstanding the dearth of money and of men, the strain at home requiring every nerve to sustain it, the old Spanish blood was true to itself. Volunteers sprang up in crowds; and force after force was shipped, is shipped still, to the island, ostensibly to quell a rebellion that never held a position from the first. A nation that can act so in such a moment must have something in it.

Before taking leave of Prim, in turn the hero and the terror of the revolution, much as we deplore that the destinies of such a nation at such a crisis should have fallen into the hands of such a man, we cannot help paying a tribute to his never-flagging energy, dauntless courage, and prompt decision. Men laughed at Prim, at his speeches, and wondered how he ever gained his position. Speaking on the deficiency of the national treasury, and utterly unable to tide over those rocks on which all governments break—figures: “I know we shall be able to meet the deficiency,” said Prim, “But how?” asked the deputies. “I do not know exactly how; but I have a feeling in my breast which convinces me;” the words are from memory, but they convey the substance. Men laughed, but Prim stood his ground; and gradually the question, “What will Spain do?” merged into that of “What will Prim do?” A better man and a wiser statesman, neither very difficult to obtain, would have availed himself of such an opportunity to heal his country’s wounds. Prim could not do this; he did not know how; but he was at least “wise in his generation.” He could not save the sick man; he did the next best thing, he kept him from killing himself. The foolhardiness of the man was his destruction. He had often had warnings, but he knew not what fear was, and took no precautions.

“To have the republic is easy,” said Castelar, the leader of the republicans, after one of his defeats, to Prim. “We have only to kill one man.” “Nothing but a thunderbolt kills me,” retorted Prim, “and of those very few fall.”

The thunderbolt fell and crushed him, but failed to crush what it was aimed at, the monarchy. Amadeus landed just in time to learn that his right-hand man was gone—a fearful venture for a young king and his queen. But he braved it royally; and though the race of Victor Emanuel can never find much favor in our eyes, this son of his, we confess, has borne himself through trying scenes like a king and like a gentleman, nobly supported by his brave and Catholic lady. That he was never elected by the people is clear; that, notwithstanding his personal merit, he is not likely to stay long where he is, is the surmise of all. If a telegram, without the slightest foundation in fact, announced his expulsion to-morrow, not a man in the world would disbelieve it. The people can feel no sympathy with a man who has no sort of title to their ancient crown; who is a perfect stranger to them, and almost to the world; who after the hawking of their throne about Europe, was forced upon them against their will. Besides, the Italians, of all European nations, are despised in Spain. They are considered there as good singers, dancers, cooks, and such like, but not the men for anything manly or great: how much less for the throne of Ferdinand the Catholic! “King Macaroni the First” was the burlesque that greeted Amadeus on his arrival in the capital. With him we will not trouble ourselves further, but with the revolution that gave occasion to the accident of his accession, and which will displace him to-morrow or the next day.

Spain undoubtedly was in a bad state under the régime of Isabella. The question is, Has she bettered herself by driving out the queen? The new order came in with a grand flourish of trumpets. Progress was the watchword: the “Progressistas” were Prim’s party till he broke them up. We have touched already on the blood shed in civil strife for this party and for that, but there are other things to consider. Education is the word of the day; let us see what the revolution effected in this direction.

The Jesuits under great difficulties were organizing colleges and missions; they were straining every nerve to educate and improve the people, and were just beginning to make some headway when the revolution came; and of course the first “abuse” to be abolished was the Order of Jesus—that order that flourishes even in Protestant countries like England, where the government, under such a chancellor as Mr. Lowe, grants them a pension for their observatory at Stonyhurst. They had to fly the country; their establishments were all broken up and seized upon by the government. A case in point:

At Port St. Mary’s, between Cadiz and Jerez, the gentlemen of the town, seeing the good effected by the Jesuits in their missions, and feeling it in the improved conduct of the men they employed, as more than one of them assured the writer, united and raised funds sufficient to build a magnificent college which they presented to the society. The government, then of Isabella, had nothing to do with it. When the revolution broke out, there were three hundred students there, many of them from the first families of Spain. In addition to these, forty of the poor children of the district were admitted to the course of studies free. The Jesuits were banished, and escaped with their lives, thanks to the courage of a noble-hearted gentleman of the town and his sons, who at the risk of their own lives and property gave them shelter till Topete himself went and conducted them to the sea. The college was closed and seized by the government. The gentlemen who built it demanded the building to be used at least for educational purposes, no matter under whom. To all their remonstrances a deaf ear was turned; and the college stands tenantless to this day. Those who had the means sent their children out of the country to England, France, or elsewhere. Many could not, and for them there was no remedy. Their children must do without education while the work of enlightenment goes on.

They drove out the friars and the nuns destitute into the world; seized upon their property, and possessed themselves of their treasures, the vessels of the sanctuary, vestments, paintings, gifts given in expiation of sins or propitiation of heaven by men and women long ago resting in their graves. Not a year back the writer, then in London, saw an announcement in the Times of the accession of some rare Spanish jewelry to the curiosities of the very interesting Museum at Kensington. He went, and found the ornaments that had decked the images and altars of the Virgen del Pilar at Saragossa, neatly arranged in two large cases, each ornament ticketed off as in a Jew’s shop, with the estimated value underneath in sums varying from over a hundred, sometimes over two or three hundred, pounds downwards. This sacrilegious robbery was repeated throughout the country—a dangerous example to the poor, whom they had indoctrinated with the pernicious ideas so prevalent in these times, the climax of which we saw the other day in Paris.

There was to be no state religion, and the clergy no longer to be salaried by the government. We must observe how all these movements strike at the church first; as is right they should do, for, that power destroyed, there is an end to morality, and the rest is easy. After a fierce and prolonged debate, in which the republicans came out in their true colors, and gave utterance, not the greater number happily, to open-mouthed blasphemy not simply against the church, but against the God whom Protestant and Catholic adore in common, the motion was not carried. The Catholic Church continues the church of the state, as it is the church of the whole nation.

“There are three things I hate intensely (que me odian): God, the monarchy, and phthisis,” said an alcalde in the north. It is a comfort to know that the wretch who said this craved a priest on his dying bed when attacked by the last object of his hatred, and God, ever merciful, allowed him one.

Emilio Castelar, the prime mover in the motion, spoke differently. He is the leader of the republicans: young, gifted beyond measure in all that can give a man influence among his fellows, a marvellous orator, whom the whole cortes, from the prelate to the red-hot republican, listens to spell-bound when he speaks. His attacks on Prim were terrible, unceasing, unsparing; he lashed the cortes into foam; but Prim, conscious of his power, had a dry, sarcastic manner of meeting them that took a good deal of the eloquent edge off. On the religious question Castelar said, “For my own part, if I chose any religion, it would be the Catholic, in which I was born and in which my mother died. A Protestant I could never be: it is too frigid for me.”

Liberty of the press, in these days the bulwark of our rights, liberty of public discussion, were proclaimed. The press was free to attack everything and every institution we consider holy. The republican papers poured forth floods of blasphemy unchecked. The Carlist, the Catholic organs alone were suppressed. Villaslada, the editor of the Pensamiento Español, the leading Carlist and Catholic newspaper, which bears the Holy Father’s blessing on its page, was forced to fly the country, and his papers seized. He has since returned, and has now a seat in the cortes. His offence was attacking the government and advocating the cause of Don Carlos at a time when Prim professed to await the expression of the will of the people to declare the king. So much for free discussion.

It would be tedious as well as profitless to take every item in the catalogue of a nation, and contrast them now with what they were before the overthrow of the Bourbon line. Certain it is that, bad as things were in Spain under Isabella, they are worse at present. Her commerce has deteriorated wofully. “We know not what to expect in Spain at any moment. The men we employ have been so preached to by the apostles of the revolution that they are ready to turn on us we know not when. We dare not keep a large stock on hand. We are trying to sell things off even at a sacrifice, we get our money safe banked in England, and, if the revolution and ruin come, well, at least we shall have some provision for our wives and children.” That is how any merchant will speak to-day on Spanish affairs.

“The shortest road to peace is through the revolution,” said Villaslada, and that is the opinion of all the thoughtful men the writer has met. They look upon a revolution as inevitable, the passions of the people have been so tampered with. It is hoped for that the people may sicken of their illusions; that the fury may waste itself; that the blood-letting which must follow may allay the fever, may open their eyes to the Utopia which their frenzy pictures.

It is a sad state for such a nation. It makes us anxious about the question we asked at the beginning, What is its destiny? Its debt is increasing as its credit declines. And yet the nation might be a great nation still.

Its foreign possessions it can do without. To get rid of Cuba would really be a relief. The advantages which the island affords for commerce by no means compensate for the continual anxiety it causes—the support of an army and a fleet. Spain is self-sufficient. With an area similar to that of France, her population is only one-third as large. The country if worked could produce corn enough to feed more than half Europe. Magnificent forests of chestnut and mahogany, soft groves of orange and olive trees, clothe and beautify the soil. Splendid rivers roll through the land, while bays and safe harbors indent the coast. In a little district perhaps not more than ten miles square grows the wine that supplies the whole world with sherry. Spanish wool holds its own in the mart. The people are intelligent, peaceful, and moral by nature. In no country can an inferior talk to a superior as freely without passing beyond the bounds as in Spain. Beautiful, historic cities are scattered through the land. Treasures of art are in their churches and galleries, refining the feelings and quickening the intellect. Their language is music; their climate delicious; their soil fruitful; land and living cheap. Their fleet is a formidable one; the Biscayan mariners for boldness and skill are unsurpassed, tossed as they are from infancy in the cradle of their bay, where the wide-spreading Atlantic is for ever wroth that it can go no further. The bravery and discipline of their army is within our recollection. That the energy of the race has not died out is proved by the war in Morocco, the speedy quelling of the revolution, the readiness of the nation to engage in war with such a power as ourselves, where the final issue could not be for a moment doubtful; but that much derided phrase “national honor” kept them true to themselves and their traditions, and we were wise enough not to provoke a contest with a people ready to sell their lives so dear. Yet with all these advantages, their course to-day is a downward one, and will continue so until one of two governments comes—either a man like the First Napoleon or a Bismarck, who to the iron will of Prim shall add a genius which the latter neither possessed nor pretended to possess; strong enough to grind down if necessary, but great enough to lift up. To such a man both Spain and France to-day present fields ripe with opportunity.

Or, for Spain at least, where there is still great faith and reverence for what is great and true, where happily materialism has not yet seized upon the hearts and the intellect of the people, a government that, instead of striking at the church which still is the church of the nation, and sapping the roots of Catholic, that is, of all morality, should call that church to its aid, and say to the people, “Your God shall be my God”—such a government would have from the start the greatest ally it could hope for in a religious people. Let it tell the people boldly that it shall have liberty, but not license, that it shall march with the age, that its great possessions are gone, never to return; but that at home it has resources that cannot fail, which only require the working to make them produce a hundredfold; a government which shall educate the children in religion, and from their infancy pour into their souls lessons of truth. Such a government might regenerate Spain. Such is partly the programme of Don Carlos. But he is the disciple of another school. Could he unlearn a little the doctrines of his school, Don Carlos holds the best chance to-day not only of occupying the throne, but of occupying the hearts and hopes of the nation.

And here we close with a remark on the failure of revolutions to work their purpose.

“The driving out of one unclean spirit to make room for seven more unclean,” is the history of all movements that have ever upset a throne which tradition has set in the intellect of the people, which custom has rooted in the soil, which has literally “grown with their growth and strengthened with their strength,” and even declined with their decline or caused it, which is of them. It is a strange fact, but history bears it out. As we have shown, the Spaniards drove out their queen, and for a moment held their destiny in their own hands. The French drove out the Emperor, and held their destiny in their hands. Is either country the better for their action? In great contrast to these stands out Germany, before the war composed of a number of independent or semi-independent peoples. They united and placed themselves under the yoke, and present to the world a combination so great, so powerful, so irresistible by any single state save Russia or our own, that the world was convulsed by it, and the face of Europe changed in a day. Whether it will last or not is foreign to our present purpose. Men should “count the costs” before they overturn any government. It is a hard thing to change a nation. Even though you present something better, you must combat rooted prejudice, immemorial tradition, every spontaneous feeling that rises, before your idea can hold the popular mind. Look at the slow spread of Christianity. People would not give up their gods of wood and stone. Our Lord cast out devils before their eyes. “It is by Beelzebub you cast them out,” they cried. But the agents of revolution generally begin on the other side. They cast in devils. They uproot everything that is stable; they undermine morality; they teach men to scoff at everything; to obey no law. Man is free, and this world is his to do as he likes with. Who says no? The priest? The priest and the monarchy go hand-in-hand to bind free-born nations down in superstition and slavery. So they work, and, when their harvest is ripe, they reap their reward. They hack at everything right and left. But demons are powerful only to destroy, and they have raised those that they cannot lay, save by blood and iron, as Prim did, as Trochu and the rest were compelled to do. “And the last state of these nations is worse than the first.”

We were saved from a like fate because the monarchy was never known here; our constitution was not a new one, it was in the intelligence of the people from the first, and its exponent was George Washington.

People with their own destiny thrust upon them can do nothing with it. Men have brooded for years under evil government, and when that falls a thousand quacks are ready, each with his panacea for the cure of the nation’s woes, and one is as likely as another. As for the nation at large, it wants to be governed. It cannot sit down and think, the matter out, rejecting this and choosing that. The first that is ready, if it happens to be good, good; if not, so much the worse. They have already knocked one government on the head; why should they stop at a second, or a third, or any number? And so step in cruelty and oppression on the one side, lawlessness in every form on the other. It is better to cure than to kill; better to reform than to overthrow; and if we must overthrow, let us do it like men and not like fiends. If the joint is rotten ere you displace it, see that you can replace it. The monarch is the key-stone of the constitution in lands where monarchy prevails. Remove that, and the whole fabric is shattered. You must build anew. You may build better; at all events, time is lost; most likely you will build worse; strengthen, reform the old—beware how you destroy it.