The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

With the same certainty that Pyrrhus foretold the destruction of Carthage or Rome, by the bone of contention which Sicily afforded, may the destruction of England or France, or both, be prognosticated from the French occupation of Africa. France by her mismanagement has only retarded the explosion, and she has not the courage to withdraw. Her invasion of Africa was as little her own purpose or will, as the invasion of Spain in 1823. A foreign hand planned and prompted it in mystery at Versailles, and publicly hailed and encouraged it from beyond the English Channel,[60] whence alone was to be apprehended censure or dissatisfaction.

Ceuta is the great Botany Bay of the Spaniards. There were here recently three thousand five hundred convicts; but two thousand have been sent off to Castille to work on some canal there; those left are the worst class, transported for not less than ten years and “retention,” which means that they may be kept as much longer as the governor thinks fit. After five years’ residence, they are hired out. The landlord of the café where I stayed gave them, as a class, an excellent character. Inquiring the kind of crimes some of them had committed, he said, “the two young men who attend you are here for murder.” There is here a greater accumulation of malefactors than on any other spot of the earth, yet you might lay down gold in the streets with impunity. There are abundant facilities for escape; the sea is open, the town accessible at every point; there are boats all round, and the convicts outnumber the other population. They are not, as in Gibraltar, driven in gangs, ironed, and with “Convict” stamped on every article of their dress. Here they go about free; the watchmen in the street at night are themselves convicts. This humanity in the treatment of convicts extends equally to slaves: the Spaniards extend to them the protection of the laws, giving up to them the feast days; allow them progressively to re-purchase their liberty, and when they have done so, admit them to perfect equality of consideration with the white men.

The governor was no less interesting than the Presidio. He seemed like an exile of ancient times, and with a melancholy dignity dwelt on the thought of his country. He had been several years an emigrant in Europe, without knowing or choosing to know any language save his own. He laboured to assure me that many things that were done were not according to the heart of the nation, and repeated several times, “If I could go with you into the peasants’ huts, and make them speak what is in their minds, you would have reason to respect Spain.” He had been forty-four years in the service, and had never known his country, except suffering from injuries inflicted on her by foreign powers, while Spain had done nothing against any one. But that was not all. “It is impossible for a Spaniard not to feel that his country is the object of—” and here he paused as if to muster courage to utter the word “desprecio.” He was pleased when I said that the real Spaniards were dumb, and the bastards loquacious, and the stranger who wished not to mistake Spain must close his ears. He asked the proportions of the two:—my answer was, as one and a half to ninety-eight and a half.

“Whoever says that Spain is poor or weak, lies.—Where do you see a people that work so little, and possess so much? Where in Europe is there a government so extravagant, or such a horde of public functionaries? The ‘administrators’ in Spain would supply France, Germany, and England put together; and what is all the political agitation, except a scramble for these posts? We want no new laws or constitutions; but only to administer those that our fathers have left us. One man, without genius or originality, but with courage and honesty, might make Spain the happiest country in Europe. As to resources, I say they are enormous. If you were to put in one heap the money that goes into the public treasury, and in the other, that which is kept back by the public functionaries, the latter would be the higher of the two. All we want is order. Look at our army. What can Europe show superior in vigour, endurance, discipline, intelligence, or docility? Look, too, at its numbers: two hundred thousand!”

I ventured to dissent on this last point, and showed that Spain entered on her war with France without any army, as on her war with England at the beginning of the previous century. On both occasions she had no fleet. Armies were requisite to attack, but incapacitated for defence: heroic defences were always made by a people, as shown in the contrast of Algeria with Poland; as shown in the contrast of Spain with Germany and Italy, which had all bowed before Napoleon: Spain’s strength appeared after army, king, government, had been swept away; she was the only country in Europe whose people did not want soldiers to protect them, &c.

I observed that Spain stood in an anomalous position. Unlike a secondary state, she had nothing to apprehend on the score of her independence; unlike a first-rate one, she was engaged in no schemes against the independence of other people: that an army in Spain was consequently as needless as it was noxious.

He replied, that what I said did not apply specially to Spain, and might be predicated of the whole of Europe; to which I readily assented. His Spanish self-love, for a moment alarmed, was soothed when I showed him that I was as adverse to standing armies for the internal interest of the great and preponderating States, as he could be, because of the facilities which it gave them of interfering with and oppressing the others. I pointed to this, as the master-disease of our times, and as signalized as such even in the last century, by some of the greatest men; that it feeds, as Montesquieu says, upon itself, growing by competition; and that, independently of their misuse, standing armies by their pressure must ultimately bring every one of the existing European States to the ground.

Spain, separated by the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, as she is distinct from them in ideas, could easily relieve herself; she had fewer obstacles to contend with than any other State, except England. Our whole parliamentary history had been a struggle of patriotic men against standing armies and funded debt. He himself had admitted, that one honest man might restore Spain; and how so, unless there were great abuses in practice which had not degenerated into principle? He had particularized the armies of functionaries; let him add to these this horde of two hundred thousand regulars.

“Where is the man,” he said, “to do it?” I observed, that it could only be by seeing and showing what was wrong, that the man could ever be made or found to put it right.

This conversation was strikingly recalled to me by a book, entitled “Political Testament of Cardinal Alberoni,” which, on my return, I found at a stall. I turned over the pages with extreme curiosity, to see if it presented any stamp of authenticity. One of the first sentences I fell upon was the following: