[Inclosure in No.
751.––Translation.]
The divisions of the liberal party—their sad
consequences for the country.
[From the Monitor Republicano, August 7,
1878.]
We have frequently asked ourselves what the divisions of the liberal
party in Mexico signify. Proclaiming the same principles, entertaining
the same aspirations, united in the same history of abnegation and
sacrifices, it is not understood how the numerous members of this great
family have separated and every day separate more, when they should,
from the very nature of things, combine their efforts and unitedly
advance to the attainment of a great object, the progress and prosperity
of the country.
The antagonism between parties which aspire to ends diametrically
opposite to such an extent that what one affirms the other denies, is a
logical consequence of their respective situations. No one can be
surprised, for example, that the reactionary element is radically the
enemy of the progressive school. Between the tendencies toward the past
and the aspirations toward the future, between the denial of political
liberty and its realization, there neither is nor can there be agreement
of any kind, because it would be equivalent to expecting contrary ideas
to become reconciled and produce a harmonious whole. But when nothing of
this exists, but, on the contrary, the agreement upon principles, even
to their most remote consequences, is a real and positive fact, then
these struggles and conflicts cannot be understood, the fecundity of
which in evil can only be measured by their sterility for good.
But nevertheless the discord in the bosom of the liberal party forms the
political history of our country for the past ten years; for more than
ten years these fratricidal rancors have covered the vast extension of
the republic with the blood and ruin, exhausting the vital force of the
nation, wasting precious time which could have been employed in the
organization of elements which to-day are tossed in the chaos of
anarchy. And this singular and painful phenomenon, on reaching its
farthest limits, illustrates all the lack of utility, and, let us say it
at once, all the criminality which is allied with the causes which have
produced it.
We are accustomed to hear the daily accusations which the contending
factions mutually launch at each other, in which they appear to have
exhausted recrimination [Page 572] and
abuse. Each one of these factions endeavors to persuade the nation that
it alone possesses political truth, that it alone is the depository of
patriotism; republican virtue, and respect for the constitution, while
it attributes to its adversaries sordid egotism, bastard interest, and
arbitrary conduct in all their operations, as the result of the most
mean and repugnant motives. The nation in the mean time witnesses this
unedifying spectacle and pronounces an irrevocable sentence, because it,
being above individual passions, and knowing perfectly the history of
our men and our parties, knows very well what to regard in the torrent
of reproaches and imputations which cannot obscure the truth of the
facts. Because, really, if we look for the origin of such contentions,
if we examine the conduct of the parries which contend, and destroy each
other as far as possible, it will be seen that none of them will remain
guiltless before the tribunal of history; since, although all embrace
men of good intentions, patriots who have lent eminent services to the
country in the days of trial, all have also committed errors of grave
importance which have brought the republic to the extreme of disunion
and anarchy, and which portend a future still more unhappy.
But if experience tells us this; if impartial reason can do no less than
recognize the fact that on losing sight of the great idea which serves
as a nucleus to the liberal party, the different portions which produced
such schism followed a course of adventure, from which the common
country could expect nothing good or useful, it is now time to seriously
reflect upon the fruits of such deviation and make a powerful effort to
stay if possible the consequences which are yet to be derived from such
lamentable antecedents.
Many times we have asked ourselves, is reconciliation among the different
members of the republican family possible? Can the reconstruction of the
great party, which symbolizes the national aspirations for peace,
liberty, and progress, be effected? And in case of the absence of
sufficient abnegation for the consummation of so meritorious a work,
what is the fate which awaits, not merely a certain political
organization, but the country disunited, debilitated, impotent to
control the disorder which consumes it?
These questions, we do not conceal it, embrace as many other problems,
the simple enunciation of which surprises and startles the mind of him
who is constantly preoccupied with the future destiny of our nationality
and our race. Because there is no occasion to hug delusions; if the
contentions of personal factions are to continue as up to the present,
keeping the country in a struggle more or less stupid, more or less
bloody, peace is impossible, and the resources of authority exhausted,
respect for the institutions lost, disgraced before foreign nations, it will neither be possible to establish a durable
government nor to restrain crime which, under a thousand forms, may
invade society, the country being condemned, as it seems, to
inevitable dissolution.
If, then, no good is to be derived from division, from breaking into
fragments, and if this deadly combat between victors and vanquished
cannot be converted into a stable and durable situation, no recourse is
left except to appeal to the union of the party which should not have
divided, re-establishing it upon its natural bases, regenerating it in
the genuine inspiration of its principles, returning to its strength and
energy, in order that it may fulfill the social mission which is imposed
upon it, and advance unobstructed by the upright path of reason and
justice.
Perhaps we may be censured as Utopians, as dreamers with impossible
ideals, as visionary politicians who are not familiar with the positive
ground of reality; perhaps it will be thrown in our faces that we lose
time in endeavoring to weld together the fragments of a whole,
irrevocably shattered; it may be so; but so long as there is any
probability of emerging from the chaos in which the Mexican people is
agitated, so long as one hope exists of putting an end to the state of
anarchy in which all society writhes convulsively, it is our duty to
point out that probability, to encourage that hope, outside of which
there is no plank of safety in the midst of the wreck of all the ideas
which maintain and give life to the nations.
In a word, the reconstruction of the liberal party is the only salvation
for the republic in the supreme conflict to which it has arrived, and we
do not despair of this reconstruction being effected, by means of that
mysterious law which presides over society, preventing nations from
falling into definite dissolution.