“The babe, Rosendo,” she said quietly, “was born––blind.”
CHAPTER 30
The “revolutionist” of Latin America is generally only the disgruntled politician. His revolution is seldom more than a violent squabble among greedy spoilsmen for control of the loose-jointed administration. But the great Mosquera Revolution which burst into flame in New Granada in 1861 was fed with fuel of a different nature. It demonstrated, if demonstration were necessary, that the Treaty of Westphalia did not write finis to the history of bloodshed in the name of Christ; that it had but banked the fires of religious animosity, until the furnace should be transferred from the Old World to the New, where the breath of liberty would again fan them into vigorous activity.
The Mosquera War tore asunder Church and State; but left unhappy Colombia prone and bleeding. It externalized a mighty protest of enlightenment against Rome’s dictates in temporal affairs. And, as has before happened when that irresistible potentiality, the people, has been stirred into action, the Church was disestablished, its property confiscated, and its meddling, parasitical clergy disenfranchised.
But then, too, as almost invariably occurs when the masses 282 find that they have parted with cherished prejudices and effete customs, and have adopted ideas so radical as to lift them a degree higher in the scale of progress, they wavered. The Church was being humiliated. Their religion was under contempt. The holy sacrament of marriage was debased to a civil ceremony. Education was endangered by taking it out of the hands of the pious clergy. Texts unauthorized by Holy Church were being adopted. Where would this radical modernism end? The alarm spread, fanned by the watchful agents of Rome. Revolt after revolt occurred. And twenty years of incessant internecine warfare followed.
Fear and prejudice triumphed. A new Constitution was framed. And when it was seen that Roman Catholicism was therein again declared to be the national religion of the Republic of Colombia; when it was noted that the clergy, obedient to a foreign master, were to be readmitted to participation in government affairs; when it was understood that a national press-censorship was to be established, dominated by Holy Church; and when, in view of this, the great religio-political opponent was seen laying down her weapons and extending her arms in dubious benediction over the exhausted people, the masses yielded––and there was great rejoicing on the banks of the Tiber over the prodigal’s return.
When Wenceslas Ortiz was placed in temporary control of the See of Cartagena he shrewdly urged the Church party to make at least a pretense of disbanding as a political organization. The provinces of Cundinamarca and Panamá were again in a state of ferment. Congress, sitting in Bogotá, had before it for consideration a measure vesting in the President the power to interfere in certain states or provinces whenever, in his opinion, the conservation of public order necessitated such action. That this measure would be passed, Wenceslas could not be sure. But that, once adopted, it would precipitate the unhappy country again into a sanguinary war, he thought he knew to a certainty. He had faced this same question six years before, when a similar measure was before Congress. But then, with a strong Church party, and believing the passage of the law to be certain, he had yielded to the counsel of hot-headed leaders in Cartagena, and approved the inauguration of hostilities.
The result had been a fiasco. Congress dropped the measure like a hot plate. The demands of the “revolutionists” were quickly met by the federal government. The causae belli evaporated. And Wenceslas retired in chagrin to the solitude of his study, to bite his nails and wonder dubiously if his party were strong enough to insure his appointment to the See of Cartagena in the event of the then aged occupant’s demise.