"At present, my dear brother, there is a very formidable question in our Spain, that of the finances. The Spanish debt is something frightful to think of; the productive forces of the country are not enough to cover it—bankruptcy is imminent. I do not know if I can save Spain from that calamity; but, if it be possible, a legitimate sovereign alone can do it. An unshakable will works wonders. If the country is poor, let all live frugally, even to the ministers; nay, even to the King himself, who should be one in feeling with Don Enrique El Doliente. If the King is foremost in setting the example, all will be easy. Let ministries be suppressed, provincial governments be reduced, offices be diminished, and the administration economized at the same time that agriculture is encouraged, industry protected, and commerce assisted. To put the finances and credit of Spain on a proper footing is a Titanic enterprise to which all governments and peoples should lend aid."
Here follow a repudiation of free trade as applied to Spain, and a few well-turned periods dealing in the usual Spanish manner with the duties of the ruler, laying down, among other axioms, that "virtue and knowledge are the chiefest nobility," and that the person of the mendicant should be as sacred as that of the patrician.
At the close there is a very sensible sentence, affirming that one Christian monarch in Spain would be better than three hundred petty kings disputing in a noisy assembly. "The chiefs of parties," continues the letter, "naturally yearn for honours or riches or place; but what in the world can a Christian king desire but the good of his people? What could he want to be happy but the love of his people?"
The letter winds up by the affirmation that Don Carlos is faithful to the good traditions of the old and glorious Spanish monarchy, and that he believed he would be found to act also as "a man of the present age." The last sentence is a prayer to his brother, "who had the enviable privilege of serving in the Papal army," to ask their spiritual king at Rome for his apostolic benediction for Spain and the writer.
If this document was written propriâ manu, by Don Carlos, he must be endowed with higher intellectual faculties than most Kings or Pretenders possess. It is undeniably clever, and is more progressive than one would expect from an upholder of the doctrine of Divine right. It may be, as Tennyson sings, that the thoughts of men (even when they are Bourbons) are widened with the process of the suns. But I protest that there is such a masterly mistiness in it here and there, such a careful elusion of rocks and ruggednesses political, and such a fine wind-beating flourish of the banner of glittering generality, that I think there were more heads than one engaged in the concoction of the manifesto. I have studiously refrained from the introduction of the religious topic as far as I could in this work—it is outside my sphere; but I should be unjust to the reader did I not give him some information (not from the controversial standpoint) on a subject which will obtrude itself in any discussion on the merits of the conflict which has twice distracted Spain and may divide the country again. It is unfortunately indisputable that religion was poked into the quarrel. The struggle was described in El Cuartel Real as a religious war; the theological allegiance of the partisans of Don Carlos was appealed to, and their ardent attachment to the Papacy was worked upon, as in the concluding sentence of the proclamation of Don Carlos. In those portions of the north where Carlism was all-powerful, the authorities were emphatically showing that those who served under them must be practical Roman Catholics nolentes volentes. An austere placard, signed by Barona, member of the Carlist war committee, was posted in the province of Alava, and ordained among other articles: Firstly, that the town councillors of every municipality should assist in a body at High Mass; secondly, that the mayors should interdict, under the most severe penalties, all games and public diversions, and the opening of all public establishments during Divine service; and thirdly, that all blasphemers, and all who worked on a holiday, who gave scandal, or who danced indecently, should be scourged. The first of these articles is lawful enough in a country which is almost exclusively Roman Catholic. In England nothing can be said against it, seeing that British soldiers of all denominations are compelled to attend Church parade, and the prisoners in all gaols have to register themselves as belonging to some religion. There is just this theoretical objection, however—the article implies that municipal honours are to be limited to members of one creed, which is intolerant. That which underlay the antipathy of numerous Conservatives outside Spain to the Royalist cause, was the belief entertained that the success of Don Carlos would lead to the re-assertion of clerical preponderance, would destroy liberty of conscience as understood in most European nations, and would set up a political priesthood. The manifesto of Don Carlos does not deal with those points in the full and categorical manner desirable. I was told there were two parties in the Carlist camp, the clerical and—for want of a better name, let it be called—the non-clerical The former, the Basques, and those who gave Carlism its great primary impulsion, were as zealously Roman Catholic as ever Manuel Santa Cruz was. They looked forward to the re-acquisition of the ecclesiastical domains and the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in all its ancient supremacy of wealth and power. The non-clericals knew that the Basques, even assuming them all to be Carlists, were but 660,000 in number, a small minority of the population, and that the existence of a State unduly influenced by a Church—things temporal controlled by personages bound to things spiritual—was antagonistic to the feelings of the majority of Spaniards.
Having met a nobleman distinguished for his services to Carlism, I put it to him bluntly, "Would Don Carlos on the throne mean a relapse into religious bigotry?"
He answered me with candour, "I am a Roman Catholic, and if I thought so I should be the last man to lend a penny to his cause."
"But," I urged, "that is the general impression in England, where he is trying to negotiate a loan, and if it is left uncorrected it does him injury. Why does he not repel the impeachment?"
"The truth is," he said, "Don Carlos has made too many public explanations."
I returned to the charge, challenging my acquaintance to deny that many of the supporters of Don Carlos would fall away if they had not the thorough belief that his cause was as much identified with the triumph of Roman Catholicism as with that of legitimacy. His reply was not a denial, but an admission of the fact, with the addition that in war one must not be too particular as to the means of enlisting aid, and stimulating the enthusiasm of supporters, which is an argument as true as it is old. Don Carlos, in his manifesto, goes on the assumption that the Republicans are all atheists, or something very like it. It is only fair to let the Republicans speak for themselves, and explain what is the Republican estimate of the Carlist religion. The San Sebastian newspaper, El Diario, may be assumed to be a fair exponent of the sentiments of the anti-Carlists, and thus emphatically, and not without a spice of antithesis, it delivers itself: