It will be seen that once the rule of alternating office by mutual arrangement be broken, the end of the whole system of gerrymandering the elections would be brought within sight, for any Government which enjoyed the confidence of the nation would remain in office year after year, once the people were permitted to make their voice heard in the elections.
Señor Maura, or those who inspired him, of course foresaw this after the fall of his Cabinet in October, 1909, and his address to his party on that occasion marks an epoch in the history of political reform in Spain, although perhaps not precisely on the lines he intended.
His party, he said, must fight without truce against the Liberals, “ex-Ministers and ex-Presidents of Council who reach office in collaboration with anarchists.” Nor must his own party stand alone, he said, for it would be necessary to seek the alliance of all, no matter how different their political ideals, who desired to check the advance of revolution. From that moment all relations between Liberals and Conservatives must cease. Any other course would be treachery, for only thus could the nation be saved from the reproach and the ruin with which it was threatened.
In the opinion of Señor Maura, the party against which he thus proclaimed war to the knife includes every shade of Liberalism in Spain, from the most loyal Monarchists down to the rioters in Cataluña, while his right-hand man, Señor La Cierva, Minister of the Interior in the Ultramontane Cabinet, went so far as to accuse Señor Moret of being at “one end of a chain which linked Liberals, Radicals, Democrats, Republicans, and Socialists with the persons who fired the Religious Houses in Barcelona and scattered anarchy broadcast by encouraging the abominable sedition taught in the lay schools.”
When Señor Maura declared that all relations between the two parties must cease, he no doubt expected that the party to obtain power and keep it would be his own. But the dissatisfaction caused in his own party by his violent speech showed that they did not all share his views, and for a time it looked as though there might be a split in the camp. The Clericalists foresaw days of leanness, for if Maura’s calculations went wrong and Moret was able to carry out his project of electoral reform, their occupation and their livelihood would be gone. How the dissentients were brought into line we need not inquire. But the occasion forced one of the most statesmanlike of the Conservatives to make a public confession of his faith, and it then became manifest that in Señor Sanchez Toca, ex-Minister and ex-Alcalde of Madrid, the spirit of Canovas and Silvela still survives, although he with one or two more seem to stand almost alone among their party against the tide of reaction.
After three years of loyal support, said Sanchez Toca, in an interview with the representative of the Conservative Correspondencia de España—the organ of all that is left of the old Conservative policy—Señor Maura should have consulted his Cabinet before taking a resolution which completely alters the normal course of national politics. “I stood aghast,” said he, “at the thought of the incalculable results that must spring from those furious voices convoking the whole Christian world to a holy war against Ministers holding office under the Crown, to whom even the name of Liberals was denied, and shouting with anathemas that he was no true Conservative who held other relations than those of implacable hostility with men appointed to office by the King.” And he concluded by pointing out that the true Conservative faith irresistibly impels those who hold it towards conciliation instead of provocation, and that if this reason for its existence failed, the Conservative party must disappear.
Whether Sanchez Toca could have formed a party under his own leadership on the old Conservative lines it is not possible to guess; for after making the protest of which the above is a brief abstract, he left Madrid, and it was announced that he intended to make a protracted sojourn abroad, so that no one was able to accuse him of self-seeking in his secession from the Ultramontane party. The dignity of his position, as compared with that taken up by the supporters of the “implacable hostility” which has become a byword among the scoffers, needs no emphasis.
I have dwelt at perhaps undue length upon his part in the affair, because it is assumed abroad that Señor Maura represents an united Conservative party, which, as the above declaration proves, is by no means the case.
How completely this was misunderstood by many of the English journalists who wrote about Spain in 1909 was shown by their comments upon the strength displayed by Maura in holding the whole “Conservative” forces together, and their complete misapprehension of the real causes of the dissensions which have always prevailed in the Liberal camp.
The modern Conservatives and the modern Liberals are so nearly alike in their policy as regards the Crown and the Constitution, that they might almost be classed as one party, under the general name of Monarchists. In the matter of electoral reform there seems hardly anything to choose between them, although on the question of the Religious Orders Moret’s views are perhaps rather more advanced than those of Sanchez Toca, Dato, or Gonzalez Besada, the three most prominent Conservative-Monarchists of to-day. Unfortunately, the popular distrust of the very name of Conservative is so great that it would be difficult for any one thus labelled to convince the people that he meant fairly by them. Even Moret’s policy of conciliation is taken by the masses to indicate fear of the Jesuits, rather than as a calculated avoidance of action which might lead to disturbances.