The calm with which the mass of the nation regarded the affair was, however, shaken when a report got about that Ferrer was denounced by or at the instigation of a Dominican monk—even a name being given—who, having quarrelled with him some years before, had determined to contrive his destruction. I do not say that there was any foundation for this vague story. But its ready acceptance as exculpating
SEÑOR MAURA.
Leader of the Ultramontanes.
[To face page [149].
Ferrer, by those who had previously been indifferent or hostile to him, shows how the people twist everything to the prejudice of the Religious Orders, and believe all evil possible to them. Had the Liberal papers lent themselves to agitation then, the result might have been serious. No better incitement to riot could have been found than the story of the Dominican. The death of Ferrer in itself left the mass of the people unmoved, but the ease with which churches and monasteries were destroyed in Barcelona had already set many aggrieved people thinking how easy it would be to follow Barcelona’s example in other towns where the Jesuits are numerous, and only a leader and a party-cry were needed to raise the working classes against the Religious Orders.
The whole of the Opposition Press, however, in spite of great provocation, as usual stuck to its guns and steadily, continued to condemn violence and to point out that the duty of the nation, unjustly deprived of its constitutional rights, was to prove by its self-restraint and moderation how entirely it was worthy to be trusted.
“If we could only kill Maura without hurting the King,” a working man said to me, “he would have been dead long ago, for he is the cause of all our troubles. But the Jesuits would make out that any act of violence on our part was directed, not against Maura himself, but against the party which is supposed to support the King; they would never admit that it was only their friend Maura whom we were attacking, and it would be made to appear that we were trying to overthrow the Monarchy. That is why Maura is still alive.” The conviction, and the rancour expressed in these words, cannot be rendered in print.
The speaker could not read or write. He and some ten or twelve of his friends were in the habit of meeting quietly together after nightfall, when no priest or Jesuit was likely to see them. One of the better instructed, generally a reservist who had “got education while serving the King,” would read aloud to the rest, and all would discuss the pronouncements of their chosen newspaper and form a collective opinion on them. I have sat with many such groups, in small towns and country villages, and have taken care to notice what newspaper they read. It was invariably the Libéral. It often struck me, during the three months of “repression,” that Señor Maura literally owed his life to the organs of the so-called “Trust,” which he and his party accuse of working hand in hand with the anarchists; for the sentiment recorded above was expressed in my presence many times by members of the working classes in connection with Barcelona, the war, the want of education, and all their other grievances. Maura, the Jesuits, and the Carlists, are regarded as one by the mass of the nation, and the three-fold hostility is concentrated on each member of the trinity in turn.