We hear much of the cruelty of these Spanish settlers, of their selfishness, of their greed of gold.
We must make a little allowance for the days in which they lived. Men were untutored then; peace congresses (save the mark!) were unknown; an Alabama case would either have been let alone or settled by the sword long ere it could have grown into a mere talking difficulty; men did not consult lawyers on the nice distinctions of meum and tuum. The Spaniards landed, and held their own by cruelty, oppression, and rapine, no doubt. We, with all our enlightenment, have followed their example pretty faithfully; except that, for men like the saintly Las Casas, we despatched an agent that worked a speedy conversion—fire-water. We have taken root here and grown up, and are a great nation, spreading out in all directions, wealthy, prosperous, enlightened, with civilization at our finger-ends, and Bibles willy-nilly in every one of our schools. Yes, we are a decided improvement on the Spaniards. But a hundred years ago there existed a race in this country to whom the land that we tread upon belonged. Where is that race now? A wretched remnant of it scowling and prowling on our outskirts; we are killing them off. We heard of them the other day joining in the great hunt. The most enterprising and powerful of our journals, one that has fitted out a purely benevolent expedition to Africa, sent its correspondent down to record it all. We had an “idyl of the plains”; the course of our great enlightenment and progress was drawn in fanciful colors, with this correspondent for central figure, riding for miles and miles under the stars to tell us at our breakfasts of the exact position of a soldier throwing an ornament round the neck of a savage maiden, and the evident appreciation the savages exhibited of champagne.
Spain failed in her mission, great and glorious as it was. Have we succeeded better? Has England, in India, or Tasmania, or wherever she set her foot?
Gold brought its own curse. When wealth comes unasked, few men will labor. The “Eldorado” filled the dreams and stopped the life of the Spaniards. One by one her rich possessions dropped from the parent nation, till Cuba was the only one left, and Cuba wishes to go also.
She has become a second-rate power in Europe, if so high—the kingdom “on whose dominions the sun never set.”
And here, with this glance at her past history to call to mind what she was, what she has achieved, the truly great elements that were always in her, we turn to look at her as she is; to consider her present bearing on the church, for we Catholics must always look at all things with a Catholic eye, knowing, as we do, that our religion is the one religion upon which the salvation of this world hangs; that, if the world is to be saved by us, we can never put our faith upon the shelf and enter the world as worldlings. The Spirit of God must permeate and pervade all people, all places, all things, at all times; and when that is accomplished, and not before, then will the world be saved.
Spain groaned under the rule of Isabella, or rather under the rule of her rulers. She was a woman far “more sinned against than sinning.” We are apt too often to blame the victim for the circumstances which make the victim. From her infancy a tool in the hands of unprincipled men; forced to marry a man utterly worthless in every respect; almost without one true friend, without a soul for her woman’s heart to cling to. We accuse her of all the evils created, fostered, encouraged by a host of powerful men, who used her as a chess-piece; while she stood, their game was safe. The revolution more than smouldered; but O’Donnell, at once a statesman and a soldier, kept it down. Narvaez, crafty and bold, succeeded him, and in turn went. These men, particularly the latter, in striking at their own foes, left a bitter legacy of hatred and revenge to the queen. What all foresaw came to pass—the last rising which ousted her. Prim came in; the nation’s destiny was at last in its own hands; now for the millennium.
Prim commenced it—a likely man for such a purpose. A bold, unscrupulous adventurer, whose chief virtue was his reckless bravery; no great talker; not a man who would astonish you by the wisdom of his words, but quick to decide, speedy to execute; a very soldier whose “voice was in his sword”—such was Prim. He found himself adored by the soldiers, glorified by the people. He did not care for the latter: when they wished to tear the crown from his cap on his entry into Malaga, he would not let them; he declared himself in plain words for monarchy from the beginning. He found the cortes split up into parties. Many for Don Carlos, a strong body, who if not crushed would have their king; so Prim resolved to crush them. A few for Montpensier; another few for Don Alfonso, the queen’s son; neither worth bothering about, Prim let them alone. A small compact party of republicans, very ably led; nearly all young, enthusiastic, lawyers many of them, excellent speakers, excellent fighters at a pinch, too. This was a dangerous party, who had been most instrumental in putting Prim where he was. He dared not turn round on them at once, the people were still armed. He coquetted with them. They were young, and many unfledged, eager to try their lungs, fond of the sound of their voices. Spain should be governed only as Spain wished; she should have a model constitution; freedom of the person, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of everything. No more conscriptions, only a few more thousands just to enable the army to quell those troublesome Carlists. He threw them a constitution, a model indeed in its construction, fit for Utopia, but scarcely for the wild spirits then raging in Spain. He let them wrangle over that, and turned himself to the army. He had always been popular with the soldiers; he moved everybody up a grade; by this means he created all the colonels, and the army was his. With this weapon secure in his grasp he could beat them all, and he did. He played them off, one against the other, in the cortes; he knew, split up as they were, the elements too opposed to coalesce, they would never agree about any single thing or any single person; he suggested this and he suggested that; if they would not take his suggestions, that was their fault. One thing was clear, they must support him, or anarchy would ensue. The Carlists left the chamber to fight. Precisely what Prim wanted; he had encouraged it, in fact; the sooner, the better for him, as he could the more easily crush them. He did so, cruelly and mercilessly. In the meantime, he was all honey to the republicans. But at last they began to see that they had been hoodwinked; that there was no hope of a republic from Prim; that the monarchy they hated would come in again, and all their efforts prove fruitless. Prim demanded the arms of the people—the arms which had been distributed to enable him to crush the monarchy. The republicans in their turn left the chamber to fight; and well they fought, too, against the overwhelming forces that Prim sent to quell them; for no half measures would do for Juan Prim. Those men who rose and fought so tenaciously at Cadiz, at Jerez, at Malaga, Valencia, had been well schooled beforehand by the preachers of the age. “You are poor, and your children will be poor after you. The labor of your hands goes to dress the fine ladies of the rich; to fatten lazy priests, who do nothing for a living; to set those brave gentlemen on horseback, who think themselves made of other flesh and blood than yours. We will change all that when the queen is driven out. We will all be equal, and do equal work or no work. Our men are men as theirs are; our women are women also.”
The queen was driven away; the friars, and the Jesuits, and the nuns banished. The government seized upon their houses and what was in them; of course it was not robbery when the government took them. Still the poor were not a penny the richer. These plausible doctrines had seized upon their simple minds. It was something worth fighting for, and they fought. No Paris barricades were ever defended with half the fury and obstinacy displayed by those Andalusians—the mountaineers and villagers whose fathers and grandfathers had harassed, surrounded, and captured a force of 4000 or more, under one of the First Napoleon’s generals. Still, we hear of none of those outrages at which the world sickened lately in Paris. “Aqui nadie se roba caballeros”—“Gentlemen, no one robs here,” was the first cry at Cadiz. A commandant of the forces was struck down in the midst of the revolutionists by a shot. They knew him well, and that he was going to fight against them; yet they were the first men to take him from the street and care for his wounds. There is all that is noble, generous, and faithful in the heart of this people, which it only requires a wise government to draw out.
They were beaten on all sides. They dared not rise in Madrid, for Prim kept his forces there, as a centre, menacing the country. In the midst of all this distraction, we see one flash of the old spirit that, however it might split against itself, was one against a common foe. Cuba saw its chance, and, though many concessions had been made, it would have liberty at once. Prim had quite enough to do at home; his hands were full with Carlists and republicans. We lent our sanction to the Cuban claims, with an after-eye to our own interests; and our minister made some representations that never quite came to light. Prim made no answer to them, at least in words. But, notwithstanding the dearth of money and of men, the strain at home requiring every nerve to sustain it, the old Spanish blood was true to itself. Volunteers sprang up in crowds; and force after force was shipped, is shipped still, to the island, ostensibly to quell a rebellion that never held a position from the first. A nation that can act so in such a moment must have something in it.