Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 7, 1874
No. 582.
Admiral Polo de
Bernabé to Mr. Fish.
Washington , February 19, 1874. (Received February 19.)
The undersigned, minister plenipotentiary of Spain, has the honor herewith to transmit to the honorable Secretary of State of the United States a translation of the memorandum which the executive power of the Spanish republic addresses to foreign powers. The undersigned avails himself, &c
ministry of state—circular.
The government constituted at Madrid on the 3d January, unreservedly accepted by the country and being vested by the very beginning with the fullness of power, after explaining its origin and its purpose, considers that the wished-for occasion has arrived for addressing itself to foreign nations and frankly laying before them the real nature of the circumstances from which it sprang into life, the political creed that is embodied in its component members, and the views that in the future will determine its policy.
The lamentable series of events, which, although varied in their nature and apparently contradictory at times in their outward manifestations, were logical nevertheless in their occurrence, however painful in their significance, have brought agitation and bloodshed to Spain from the abdication of her last sovereign, are perfectly well known to the world. In the present close communion of interests and intellectual intercourse between one nation and another, doubtless there has been felt abroad, just as has been our experience in past times, the commotion of that strife and of those catastrophes that seem to have been imposed upon nations as their highest teaching and as a necessary element in the purification of modern liberty. Disasters and disturbing agencies that in Spain have altered the serene and majestic course of a revolution effected without bloodshed, unanimously hailed and respected by the country, happily established on the most exalted conceptions of public law, accepted with rare benevolence, and ere long acknowledged in the person of its chief magistrate by the principal governments of Europe and America.
Amidst the wars and calamities that, like a fatal procession, followed on the resolution of the last king, and for a long time weighed heavily on our country, the powers of Europe, fearful, perhaps, lest the sparks of our conflagration should fall in their midst, have had an opportunity of observing that neither the quietude and repose characteristic of slavery, with which, on the one hand, the partisans of absolutism endeavored to allure us, nor the gratification of gross appetites and of sinister or brutal passions, with which we were tempted on the other, by demagogism, were ever able to array our citizens and the diverse classes of our society in renunciation of that constitutional liberty they had so gloriously conquered, or of those guarantees of order and stability which were to be found in the new institutions.
With almost every ship in traitorous hands, the strength of the army gone, owing to a want of discipline hitherto unparalleled in the history of Spain, our towns dismantled, and our fields laid waste by the very soldiers and sailors who ever were the shield of our protection, an example for others, and the just pride of the country; our national unity, which our forefathers had so laboriously consolidated, threatened, with dissolution; the public credit annihilated; the partisans of absolutism, who have ever taken courage with our misfortunes, elated at sight of so many untoward complications; all the powers maintaining an attitude of reserve, and some of them putting aside indifference only to frame resolutions indicative of prejudice or apprehension; property assailed, and every interest alarmed; religion outraged and persecuted; the very existence of family relations publicly lowered and reviled; the eternal foundations of human society clamorously discussed and impugned, with doubt in every mind and anxiety in every breast, the Spanish people still had secret hopes of salvation, and, by a mysterious intuition common to her most eminent sons, trusted yet to recover strength and j)eace without sacrificing those liberties they have for a long time enjoyed, and without forever yielding the progress gained during the last years and lately turned from its rightful channels by ignorance or by perfidy. Such are, briefly narrated, the features of the vital crisis we have passed, and which it was important to set forth with scrupulous fidelity, for only thus can other governments clearly understand the events we have reviewed and fully grasp their import.
The Spanish nation, suddenly left without the means that avail to defend and balance the social organisms; unexpectedly deprived of those institutions that assure her existence and assist her development, has for a long time, striven to regain possession of herself, to slowly reconstitute the shattered economy of her system, and to free herself with as little violence as possible of such as have abused her patience by covering our soil with ruin and bloodshed, of such as were but recently endeavoring to bring about anarchy and dissolution with their unsuccessful theories of federalism, and of such as in the northern part of our country wish to suppress dangerous movements by condemning us to perpetual immobility and stifle imprudent manifestations by imposing eternal silence.
In order to achieve this great and primary object, public opinion, solely intent on the liberation and reconstruction of the nation, assisted every effort, ingeniously devised every combination that through peaceful means was calculated to restore the country to herself, and accepted with approval, or possibly sought indirectly, the efficient co-operation of those very persons who were previously leading her to ruin.
[Page 916]Thus, when in September last the federal Cortes agreed to suspend their deliberations, granting to a government which was also federal dictatorial and saving powers, the greater part of our citizens and the majority of our parties sincerely concurred with the decision of that assembly, forgetting their origin, generously ignoring the senseless fancies and the suicidal exclusivism of a parliament only distinguished by the dangers it had created, and by its persistency in preventing, through arrogant self-conceit, the restoration to order and tranquillity demanded on all sides. More unanimous and more expressive, if not more noble and disinterested, was the enthusiastic adhesion given by all parties and classes of our society to aid in the work of reconstruction of that illustrious statesman who, mindful of the lessons of a painful experience, renounced with noble sincerity and heroic patriotism the most Utopian dogmas of his school, and received at the hands of the last Cortes a dictatorship inevitably condemned to be a mockery and a delusion, or to display its power against the very body by whom it had been conferred.
From the moment that Spain was able to measure the scope of that power and appreciate the loyalty of those whose mission it was to wield it, public sentiment, the press, all the vital energies of the nation gave public adhesion and support to the government, which by its manifestations became the exponent and director of aspirations common to all, and gave a character of irrevocability to the decision at first adopted by the Cortes only as a temporary measure. By the full import of that measure, the Cortes engaged themselves, before Spain and the civilized world, to carry out the fruitful mission which although late, they had taken unto themselves, or else perish divorced from their country in presence of the outburst of national feeling, inasmuch as if, in the practice of nations more free than ourselves, and more advanced in progress, there are certain principles which, by common consent, are never discussed, and are considered as immutable truths which it is not lawful to impugn; with mor’reason should such decrees and deliberations be considered final among us, as were intended to effect the re-organization of our army and navy, there-establishment of the rights of property, and the preservation of national unity.
Spain, nevertheless, waited still. Only after the Cortes had resumed their labors, when by the first vote they desisted from their projects of restoration, and again jeopardized by the strife of their imbittered passions the most fundamental institutions and the integrity of the country, and in the decomposition of the same assembly the triumph became visible, which three months previous had been anticipated, of ill-restrained demagogism, and the country was being dragged, to that ruin to which the parliament seemed to be blindly and persistently leading it. The garrison of Madrid, with wonderful prevision seized the moment for interference, rightly interpreting the wishes of the army, the navy, and the-whole country, thereby saving in a few hours the life and the honor of the nation.
The executive power of the republic which was established in Madrid on the fourth day of this month, under the presidency of General Serrano, is the result and the expression of that necessary and solemn act.
It is thereby apparent that there can be no similarity between this government and those which in former times has been brought forth by coups d’état, and how futile would be any comparison instituted between the patriotic act accomplished by the garrison of this capital and those recorded in the pages of history in olden times and for other purposes.
The new executive power was created in order to satisfy the instinct of self-preservation which at a critical moment inspired public opinion and the army; it was formed in presence of a committee, in which were represented all those liberal factions unwilling to add their share to the already long series of conflicts and disturbances, and uniting in its composition the two parties having the most direct and active influence in the revolution of September.
In spontaneous accord with its origin, in obedience to the force of circumstances, and strictly limiting the changes which necessarily followed their advent into power, as was required by the uncommon gravity of this historic moment, the executive body maintains the constitution of 1859, with the suppression of the article which was canceled by the abdication of the last king. It preserves in the organization of the various powers of the state the form it found there established, and it continues the dictatorship which but a few hours before had been exercised by a ministry named by the Cortes, with this advantage, that the present government, free from pressure and un-trammeled by parliamentary veto, is in a position to utilize immediately all the means with which it has been invested with a firmer purpose, with more rapid and energetic counsel, and with a stronger and more persevering hand, until the civil war shall have been terminated and the turbulent passions of demagogism completely subdued. Public opinion, which will then have cast off the vague uneasiness produced by rebellion, and the imposition which up to the present has been forced upon it by armed multitudes, will have free expression through the ballot-box; the nation, represented in the Cortes, will fill the void in our institutions produced by the voluntary renunciation of the monarch; will suggest such reforms in the constitution of the state as the painful [Page 917] lessons of these recent times shall have shown to he expedient or necessary; will readjust the somewhat worn mechanism of power, and by developing the strong vitality which is characteristic of free peoples will surely avoid, as is from this moment the firm resolve of executive power, the slightest cause of apprehension in reference to Spain on the part of other countries.
The unanimous adhesion given by the army to the saving act of the garrison of Madrid, and that which was subsequently expressed by all the towns and the great majority of the authorities holding office under the previous ministry, sustained from the very first the government in this hope, and afforded inestimable proof of the confidence of the country.
The rapidity with which new attempts at federal insurrection were suppressed, and the facility with which the communist flag was lowered, that flag that behind the formidable walls of Cartagena had for months been a cause of anxiety to Spaniards and of scandal to every civilized nation, should now be viewed as still more interesting results and the true justification of the new political situation.
The executive power of the republic, thus hailed and accepted by all peaceful citizens, rather as a spontaneous expression of the national want than as a result of partial efforts, will carefully endeavor to deserve and preserve the singular confidence which has been placed in it. Identified with the revolution of 1868, it will maintain, in the region of government, the political significance of that glorious uprising, under the protection of which, and by whose development, the men who to-day form the government obtained for constitutional Spain the friendship and the consideration of all nations, and gave to the various powers of Europe and America the respect and the reciprocity to which they are by so many reasons entitled.
Assembled and united to-day on the basis of a democratic code in that constitution, in its faithful observance, in the enjoyment of the liberties which it concedes, and above all in the strict and vigilant use of the guarantees with which it surrounds the cause of order, will be found the political guide of the Spanish government at the time when the embarrassment which it hopes to suppress shall have ceased to exist. But the government is conscious that, under these critical circumstances, and, as a general rule, in periods of transition common to all countries, when the limits marking political divisions become fainter, when the accumulation of events obliterates the confines of party, and rapid change of sentiment prevents the establishment in public opinion of visible and permanent boundaries, then the standard by which men and governments are to be judged is as much Mie result of their acts as of their previous aspirations; the use made of authority and the practical means to which it appeals are as important to determine a political character, as the declaration suggested by patriotism, the series of measures, and the sum of its antecedents, are no less significant of the purpose of the government than its known principles or its ultimate ideals. And in the light of these views the executive power, which at the time of its formation patriotically seized a dictatorship, willingly assumes before the various powers, as it will one day justify itself before the country, the representation of that fundamental act, and the energetic means by which it has endeavored from the moment of its birth to deserve abroad the cordial friendship of all nations, and to preserve at home against all hazards the integrity of the soil, order, and liberty.
True translation: