The only criterion
which the statesman of the nineteenth century applies to public acts is
that of expediency and legality. The first question is, "Is it lawful?"
the second, "Does it pay?" Both of these are questions of fact, and as
such susceptible of discussion and proof. The question of honor and
religion carries us at once into the realm of sentiment where no
demonstration is possible. But this is where every question is planted
from the beginning in Spanish politics. Every public matter presents
itself under this form: "Is it consistent with Spanish honor?" and "Will
it be to the advantage of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church?" Now,
nothing is consistent with Spanish honor which does not recognize the
Spain of to-day as identical with the Spain of the sixteenth century,
and the bankrupt government of Madrid as equal in authority to the
world-wide autocracy of Charles V. And nothing is thought to be to the
advantage of the Church which does not tend to the concubinage of the
spiritual and temporal power, and to the muzzling of speech and the
drugging of the mind to sleep.
Let any proposition be made which touches this traditional
susceptibility of race, no matter how sensible or profitable it may be,
and you hear in the Cortes and the press, and, louder than all, among
the idle cavaliers of the _cafes,_ the wildest denunciations of the
treason that would consent to look at things as they are.
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