United States
Legation in Spain,
Madrid, December 16, 1872.
(Received Jan. 6, 1873.)
No. 507.]
[Inclosure B.—Translation.]
Reply of the president of the council of ministers
to Mr. Esieban Collantes. Chamber of Deputies,
December 13, 1872.
[From La Gaceta de Madrid.]
[Extract.]
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The President of the Council of Ministers, (Mr.
Ruiz Zorilla.) I did not think my remarks would
give Mr. Estéban Collantes sufficient motive to say
what he has just said. I did not say that I desired to provoke a debate
in this place. There was an opportunity a few days ago for all the
deputies representing distinct groups or diverse principles to take part
in a debate concerning the question of public order. I have said to the
chamber, and I now repeat, that I thought of giving full and complete
explanations about the recent occurrences, and about the present
situation of the public order question; but Mr. Estéban
Collantes’s last words about “the integrity of our
territory and our national honor” refer to I know not what; nor do I
know what sort of a debate could be held in Congress on this point, for
in this body, unless I am uninformed of it, there is not one who does
not venerate the honor of Spain; nor do I know if the honorable
gentleman intended to refer to certain reforms which the government is
disposed to carry into effect because they are authorized by the
constitution and laws, and is ready to bring before Congress in order
that the co-legislative bodies may discuss them and vote them if they
are of the same opinion as the government.
If the honorable gentleman referred to this class of reforms, I have only
one thing to say in answer to him, namely, that those whom I believe to
be mistaken, those whom I think deceive themselves on this point are
they who imagine they defend the honor of Spain by obeying the spirit
and the passion of party, without heeding circumstances or time or the
lessons given by history to all those men who, at least in so much as
refers to us, and in view of the position they occupy, are constrained
to take heed of them, as I myself am bound to do. By what right has Mr.
Esteban Collantes sought a pretext in my words
to speak of the integrity and the honor of Spain? If I did “not know the
honorable gentleman so well; if I did not know that when he determines
to be a law-abiding man, a man who does not seek to quit the path of
legality, a man who always makes his deeds harmonize with his words; if
I could confound him with those who say one thing in official life and
another in those places where it may suit them to bear themselves
otherwise, I might think, although I do not, that after the nag raised
by the conscripts in opposition to the government has disappeared, after
the question of the loan, also converted into an attack on the
government, has disappeared, the honorable gentleman, without wishing to
do so, and without being aware that he is doing so, is aiding those who
seek to make the question of reform in the colonies a question of
patriotism, of abnegation, and of territorial integrity. No man, of
whatever political party, can outdo in love of country those who occupy
this bench, (the “blue bench,”) and there is no one, absolutely no one,
in all the political parties (although in expressing myself thus I may
appear to vaunt myself) who has ewer private relations with the
Antilles, who has less in common with any of the passions or the
interests which are especially agitated there, than the minister who has
the honor to address you; but neither is there any one more resolved and
more desirous to study calmly the question of the Antilles, and to do
what as a liberal he ought to do without forgetting his duty as a
Spaniard.
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