No. 244.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
Madrid, July 8, 1876. (Received July 26.)
Sir: The Cortes have completed the new constitution of Spain, copy of which is annexed.
Its prominent features are: Hereditary monarchy in the person and family of Don Alfonso XII, with a legislative assembly of two branches, a senate and a popular chamber; the latter founded on general suffrage, to be made more or less restricted by a law of elections; the former composed of members, one-half by right (grandees, archbishops, captains-general and admirals, and superior judicial or executive officers) or by nomination of the King, and the other half by election in the second degree out of certain denned categories of persons who have held high places in civil, diplomatic, military, or naval service, in the church, or in the literary and scientific corporations.
The much-talked-of religious article of the constitution is in the following words:
Art. 11. The Catholic Apostolic Roman religion is that of the state. The nation obliges itself to maintain the worship and its ministers.
No person shall be molested in the territory of Spain for his religious opinions, nor for the exercise of his particular worship, saving the respect due to Christian morality.
Nevertheless, no other ceremonies nor manifestations in public will be permitted than those of the religion of the state.
Some question as to the full force of the last clause has been raised in the Cortes. The words of the original are:
No se permitirán, sin embargo, otras ceremonias ni manifestaciones públicas que las de la religion del estado.
In this sentence, does the adjective “publicas” serve to qualify the two preceding substantives, “ceremonias” and “manifestaciones,” or only the second, “manifestaciones?” The ministers profess and maintain the broader and better signification.
I think such is the true grammatical construction of the phrase. I have so rendered the word “publicas,” however, as to leave the same possible room of doubt to subsist in the English.
Reserved and apparently innocent as this provision of toleration is, it was opposed with vehement zeal in both Houses; and, although it passed by a large majority, it seems to be regarded with much uneasiness and discontent in a considerable part of the country, especially by the ladies of Spain, and it remains to be seen how it will be made acceptable to the Papal See.
The constitution and the monarchy of Don Alfonso XII are indissolubly connected together. If he falls, that falls. * * *
It is but just to say that, in its general provisions, the new constitution is a very reasonable one, containing all which is good and omitting much which is bad in previous constitutions, and corresponding in theory to the existing constitutions of the other monarchical governments of Europe.
Its strength and its weakness consist in its being a fabric of compromise, aiming to avoid the extremes of absolutism and of demagogy, standing of course on the uneasy basis of a coalition, in the presence of the active enmity of all the more positive convictions at both extremities, with sufficient generality of language and flexibility of provisions to allow ample room for the healthful play of parties, but also for their factiousness, within the premises of the fundamental idea of the monarchy of Don Alfonso.
So long as the ministers shall succeed in holding in equilibrium the contending educated classes, their situation will continue to be a hopeful one, provided they have time to enter on the material improvement of the whole nation by wise measures of internal administration.
Meanwhile there is continual talk of revolution, which would be quite unworthy of attention if the people of Spain had learned to distinguish between oscillations of party ascendency and radical changes of government.
But, for want of consideration in this respect heretofore, situations apparently the most firm have yielded unexpectedly to a trivial combat of troops at Vicalvaro or Alcolea, or to a petty garrison mutiny at San Ildefonso or Madrid; and political institutions have suddenly fallen to the ground without even a combat or a mutiny, as in the recent cases of Castelar and of Serrano. Such things, unfortunately, are supposed to be always possible in Spain. That is to say, the danger lies deep in the national character and political education of the people of Spain. While she makes loud professions of “españolisino,” that is, intense nationalism of sentiment, and while, indeed, she truly manifests this feeling in sundry ways, yet she is under singular mental subjection to France, of which she ought to be most jealous, since in her intellectual culture and in her material, social, and political interests, she has suffered more injury in all ages from the latter than from any other state of Europe.
Thus at the very period when Spain was overrun and given up to devastation by the armies of Napoleon, which constituted the patent demonstration of the mischievous character and tendencies of the French revolution—its alternate anarchy and despotism at home and its invasive intermeddling abroad—her Cortes were so infatuated with its [Page 448] peculiar ideas as to proceed, in spite of the remonstrances of the wisest members, to adopt whatever there was of evil in those ideas and incorporate the same into the constitution of Cadiz.
That was a fatal step, from the consequences of which Spain has not yet been able to recover, and may never. From that day to this, in Spain as in France, constitutions, written or unwritten, one succeeding the other by violent transition, have too often been the act of desperate factions, without any firm root in the general convictions of the country, and especially destitute of that practical adaptation to existing facts, which alone can impart stability to constitutions, as we see them in the United States and Great Britain.
The influence of French ideas in Spain, but of English in Portugal, is the only plausible explanation yet given of the political tranquillity of the Portuguese and the contrasted turbulence of the Spaniards, both in Europe and America. And it is one of the titles to esteem of the new constitution and of the policy of the present ministers, to endeavor to naturalize in Spain, so far as the circumstances of the country will admit, the governmental ideas and practices of Great Britain.
This purpose is apparent in the facts; it is professed by the ministers in debate; and it is upheld by judicious friends of theirs in the Cortes, such as the Conde de Casa Valencia.
In observing the instability of constitutions and governments on the part of France and Spain, and the absurdities which they commit in this respect, one is prone to wonder how it is that the resultant of so many wise men is frequently but a concrete folly, if such an expression may be applied to the ever-changing and mostly impracticable political institutions, which come and go spasmodically in the midst of civil convulsions and foreign wars, in Spain as in France.
Hence, in Spain hitherto, of the many constitutions she has had since the disastrous blunder of Cadiz, some have been still-born, some speedily superseded by a new one, and the rest kept nominally alive only by arbitrary suspensions, that is, acts of legislative usurpation, depriving the constitution of actual vitality. For the Spaniards, like the French, are quite regardless of the distinction between constituent assemblies and legislative ones; the same body acts in both capacities; and every legislative assembly arrogates at will power to suspend the supreme constitution of the state.
Such is the deplorable confusion of mind prevailing in this respect—or shall I say the bad faith?—that the very statesmen who framed the last previous constitution, that of 1869, on the basis of a monarchy with two chambers, cannot see that when, on the abdication of King Amadeo, the two chambers proceeded to merge themselves into one—to abolish monarchy—to proclaim a republic—to substitute a committee of citizens in place of all government—to proceed thereafter to rule with one chamber only, or rather with none at all, and, by successive dictatorships, to try a series of wild experiments in constitutions, one after the other—these men cannot, or will not, see that in so doing they tore in pieces and trampled under foot that constitution.
When such ignorance or disregard of all the essential conditions of constitutionalism exists, of what avail is a mere paper constitution, though it be the perfection of human wisdom, where candidates for place and power stand ready to recur to revolutionary force to gratify their impatient ambition; or where a numerous military officiality have been trained in the fatal practice of pronunciamientos; or where every little knot of crazy political visionaries, instead of contenting itself to try its delusions in some remote corner of the country, as with us, and [Page 449] render itself ridiculous in humble obscurity, presumptuously comes to the front, and aspires to impose itself, by local insurrections, on the whole nation; or where the most passionate and violent antagonisms continue to exist in regard to the very elementary principles of government? And yet all these things are the recognized conditions of political life in Spain.
Hence, in despite of the good qualities of the new constitution, and of the conservative liberal principles which it embodies, there is frequent expression around me of doubts as to its absolute permanence; unless, indeed, the Spaniards should be diverted from suicidal domestic dissensions by the alterative influence of the great events impending in Europe.
No immediate cause of strain, however, is distinctly visible at present, nor is there any in prospect, except, possibly, when the large force, now being recruited or drawn by lot for dispatch to Cuba, shall be accumulated for that purpose at Santander and Cadiz.
I have, &c.,