The Censor handled the national Press even more sternly than the foreign, for the suspension of the Constitution gave the Government a perfectly free hand, and although the Constitutional rights were nominally restored everywhere except in Cataluña a few weeks after the rising, the Press was in reality gagged as long as Señor Maura remained in office. The Opposition indeed was placed on the horns of an impossible dilemma. So long as the party kept silence as to what they knew, Spain would continue to be held up to foreign contumely for a condition of affairs which did not exist. Yet if any Liberal dared to criticise the Government, he was clapped into prison until such time as it might suit the Government to release him.
The position was recognised by Señor Moret, the veteran Liberal-Monarchist leader. He possesses the invaluable quality of knowing when to speak and when to keep silence. And throughout the time when the fair fame of his nation was being dragged in the dust, he urged patience and submission upon his followers, pointing out that when the time came to call the Ultramontanes to account for their conduct of the Government, the strong men of his party must not be found in prison, for it would be their business to speak: and the Liberal-Monarchist statesmen, without exception, supported their leader in his patriotic policy.
Only a very strong man could have controlled the rising tide of wrath against the Religious Orders, whom the people hold responsible for everything that goes wrong with the nation. Señor Maura, the leader of the Ultramontane party, is supposed, by those who do not know the facts, to be the only really strong man in Spain, and it appears to be honestly believed abroad that he holds the Conservative party together by sheer force of statesmanship. The truth is that Maura is a weak man who owes his position as the leader of the party he is supposed to control only to the unflagging energy and intrigue of the Ultramontanes—the richest men and the subtlest intellects in the Peninsula; while Moret’s power, on the other hand, is based upon unswerving political rectitude, maintained against the onslaughts of corrupt politicians, and upon his capacity for silence among men who spend half their lives in talking. This is why he has obtained such a hold upon the people that the whole forces of political immorality have laboured to bring about his overthrow each time that he has taken office, lest he end by leading the nation into paths where corruption will have no standing ground. Maura’s policy of repression gave a great impetus to the revolutionary spirit against which it professed to be directed. And yet Moret’s influence was strong enough to keep the nation quiet, because the nation trusts him.
For once the low level of popular education, which Moret and his followers are working hard to raise, was on the side of the Liberal leader. Only some twenty-five per cent. or so of the nation can read, and of that number few indeed know any language but their own. Had the working classes realised that the Army, of which all Spain is so proud, was being traduced by the foreigner, neither Moret nor Maura could have controlled the storm of wrath that would have overwhelmed those held responsible for the lie.
Happily for Spain, the syndicate of newspapers known as the Sociedad Editorial de España, which is edited under the direction of the Liberal-Monarchist party in Madrid, and read by thousands, as against hundreds of readers of the journals which support a different policy, never wavered for a day in upholding Moret’s recommendation of patience and submission to the law, and refrained from increasing their sales by pandering to popular excitement with allusions to what was going on outside of Spain, notwithstanding the grossest insults from the Ultramontane press. Those who control the organs of the party knew well enough that if they had raised the cry of “Down with the Jesuits!” they would have called up a tempest not easily or speedily to be allayed. But they knew that their adversaries wished for nothing better, and they kept on their own course and saved Spain from a violent revolution against the Church. The syndicate of Liberal-Monarchist papers is continually accused by the Ultramontane press of being responsible for the attack on the religious houses in Cataluña, and is held up to reprobation for “encouraging the destruction of the country by maintaining the right of the people to have lay schools.” But the truth is, and the Ultramontanes know it, that to the Liberal-Monarchist press is due the present security of innumerable buildings belonging to the Church, which, but for the influence of the Liberal party, would be in smoke-blackened ruins to-day.
Many members of the educated middle classes of Barcelona assert that the disturbances in Cataluña in July, 1909, were deliberately instigated by the Jesuits. The object was, they say, by hook or by crook, to close the lay schools, and that it had long been an open secret that the Ultramontane party were determined to take the first excuse they could find to destroy an educational movement which they find inimical to their interests. And the link connecting the Jesuits of Barcelona with Don Jaime, the son of the recently deceased Pretender, Don Carlos, was provided by an indignant disclaimer of Carlist participation in the affair, published by a Carlist organ edited in Paris, long before any suggestion had been made that such participation was suspected. This was so clearly a case of qui s’excuse s’accuse that no thoughtful observer, unbiassed by political passion, could fail to put two and two together.
The peasants had no doubt whatever as to the origin of the disturbances. One of them gave me his view of the situation, as follows:
“The Carlists and the Jesuits plotted to turn out Isabel II., and now they are trying to overthrow King Alfonso. They ruined Queen Isabel because she loved the people and hated the priests, and now they are trying to do the same with los Reyes because they are popular in the country. But let them try! There are still many of us who remember what we suffered in the last Carlist war, and we do not intend to have another. Let them try to touch los Reyes! We will kill every priest in the country before they shall put a hand to that work!”
“Well,” I objected, “this is very fine talk now that Don Carlos is dead and buried, but if you did not want him for your king, why did so many of you fight for him?”
“If you were ordered to fight and knew that you and your children would be put in the street if you refused, would you not fight rather than let your family starve? The men who paid our wages said: ‘You will go with us to fight for Don Carlos or you will never have another day’s work from us.’ What help had we against our masters? Do you think we wished to take arms against Queen Isabel? If the Jesuits had not been in the affair, no one would have taken notice of her little faults. The Jesuits intended her to commit faults when they married her to a man who was no man. If she had not been good to us they would have let her stay.”