Among The Fatal Effects Of This Has Been The Extinction Of
Rational Piety And Rational Patriotism.
If a man was not a good Catholic
he was pretty sure to be an atheist.
If he did not honor the king he was
an outlaw. The wretched story of Spanish dissensions beyond seas, and
the loss of the vast American empire, is distinctly traceable to the
exaggerated sentiment of personal honor, unrestrained by the absolute
authority of the crown. It seems impossible for the Spaniard of history
and tradition to obey anything out of his sight. The American provinces
have been lost one by one through petty quarrels and colonial rivalries.
At the first word of dispute their notion of honor obliges them to fly
to arms, and when blood has been shed reconciliation is impossible. So
weak is the principle of territorial loyalty, that whenever the
Peninsula government finds it necessary to overrule some violence of its
own soldiers, these find no difficulty in marching over to the
insurrection, or raising a fresh rebellion of their own. So little
progress has there been in Spain from the middle ages to to-day in true
political science, that we see such butchers as Caballero and Valmaseda
repeating to-day the crimes and follies of Cortes and Pamfilo Narvaez,
of Pizarro and Almagro, and the revolt of the bloodthirsty volunteers of
the Havana is only a question of time.
It is true that in later years there has been the beginning of a better
system of thought and discussion in Spain.
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