No. 292.
Mr. Adee
to Mr. Evarts.
Madrid , April 13, 1877. (Received May 1.)
Sir: The reorganization of the Spanish Senate, conformably with the provisions of the present constitution, is now nearly completed.
In the exercise of his royal prerogative His Majesty has just appointed 106 senators for life, on the recommendation of the council of ministers. The decrees making these appointments appeared in the Gaceta of the 11th instant.
Under the existing constitution the total number of senators is limited to 180 life-members and 180 elected in different ways. Of the first category a number hold seats in their own right, such as grandees of the realm, having an income in excess of $12,000 annually; the higher prelates, the captains-general of the army, the admiral of the navy, and some few others, leaving the remainder to be nominated by the King.
The elected senators are chosen by indirect suffrage, exercised through the medium of the provincial deputations, the universities, the incorporated academies, and convocations of tax-payers.
In making the nominations on the part of the Crown it seems to have been the endeavor of the King’s advisers to give representation to all the most distinguished classes of Spanish society, including the nobility, the army, and eminent men who have won public or intellectual distinction. Although for the most part taken from the conservative orders, there are still among them prominent ex-senators and ex-ministers of the more demonstratively liberal parties, their proportionate representation being about equal to that attained by the same parties in the popular election of members of the lower house, and in the recent choice of the elected senators.
Notwithstanding this, much bitterness of feeling is exhibited on the part of the opposition, and notably by the so-called “Constitutionals” and “Radicals,” who assert that by the present selection of the permanent element of the senate the door is forever closed to the liberal parties in their constitutional struggles to grasp the reins of power.
In order to support this statement they assume, not merely the acknowledged conservatism of the prelates who have been seated, but also that all the life senators holding office in their own right, all the [Page 504] captains-general, all the senators elected by the corporations and taxpayers, and nearly all those now named by the Crown, are of necessity and must continue to be conservative and reactionary in their views; and that these senators, in conjunction with the conservatives elected in the ordinary course of events, even under a radical government, if such were possible, will form a majority in the upper house to the result of rendering all liberal government impossible, and perpetuating Mr. Cánovas in office in default of any other practicable solution.
Adopting this sweeping compution of the opposition press, the extreme number of life senators of all grades of conservatism is about one hundred and fifty, and there are about a dozen “Constitutionals” and some eighteen vacancies left unfilled to make up the allotted 180.
On the other hand, the supporters of the government claim that many of the conservative nominees are of liberal views, and that the number of unfilled vacancies will be about forty.
I think it is left out of account that senates are, in nearly all constitutional governments, conservative in their tendencies, and yield more slowly to the popular sentiment than the more transitory lower chamber. There seems, moreover, no good reason why, between changes of individual opinion and the natural process of gradual substitution which must occur in a large body of men of advanced age, the Spanish Senate should not respond in due time to a counter wave of political feeling whereby one of the opposition parties might be placed in power. Besides which, the conservative majority is a conciliation rather than a political unit; it is made up even now of coalesced fractions, some of which, as the “Historical Moderados,” violently oppose the government in questions of domestic liberalism, while many of the life senators are men of large landed or business interests whose sole aims would be in the direction of stability and peace in event of a political change. Under these circumstances it does not seem likely that these political and practical elements would combine in sheer conservative obstinacy to render a more or less liberal government impossible, as appears to be assumed in some quarters.
And I think it is also overlooked that the present government could not have given to any one party of the opposition an immediate chance of success in the upper house without in point of fact designating its own successor. And to have divided the chances of future power equally among the conflicting fractions in opposition would have tended, equally with the present arrangement, to make government a difficult task for any one of them, to the like result of vociferous discontent. In point of fact, the real grievance of each of these irreconcilable fractions seems to be that there are not life senators enough appointed from its ranks, nor vacancies enough left for it to fill with its own adherents, to insure its succession to exclusive power, with the same prospect of permanency as the government of Mr. Cánovas del Castillo now shows. But after all it is in this very stability of the King’s present government and freedom from the shifting uncertainties of the preceding few years that thinking Spaniards see a change for the better in the moral and material condition of Spain.
The Córtes, comprising the new senate with last year’s congress, are convoked for the 25th instant.
I have, &c.,