Europe, it is certain, nay, more, indubitable, that to-day the race of kings is run in Spain; that to-day none of the ancient dynasties, none of the new pretenders, can boast of mustering all parties on his side, or of interpreting the national sentiments.

Such is our situation, coldly considered. It is impossible to inspire faith in the stability of the monarchy, and in the pacific transmission of its privileges by hereditary right, in a people who have seen pass before their eyes so many monarchs; it is impossible to deny that an institution so strong and so firmly implanted by ages in our customs could not have fallen from its height by the conspiracy of parties, by speeches from the tribunes, by cries of the people or of the army, but only by the internal disorganization which has inevitably caused its death.

The monarchy having disappeared by a number of domestic-purely domestic-causes, inherent in our history and our peculiar character, the republic appears of itself, of its own virtue, by the law of necessity, as some organisms appear behind others in the bosom of nature. And this virtue of political principles, this complement of the historical laws, was imposed the more strongly after the revolution of September, which was applauded by the people and recognized by every government. The princes dethroned who had the privilege of representing the ancient tradition, natural rights proclaimed in all their extension, universal suffrage recognized in all its latitudes, religious liberty acclaimed in all its purity, the principle of popular sovereignty consecrated in all its truth by the sanction of the laws and the right of victory, the powers emanating from the election, the natural organization of these principles-the inflexible and fatal result of this movement was found, by forces superior to the will of man, in the proclamation of the republic. The governments of Europe who recognized the legitimacy of the principles of the revolution will not be able to deny the legitimacy of its consequences; those who recognized the powers emanating from that act will not be able to deny the definite and stable regimen which has been necessarily and logically derived from that act.

The Constituent Cortes of 1869, whose patriotism and wisdom will be recorded with applause by history, determined from the first moment of their life to proclaim the monarchical form of government, which they did for three fundamental reasons: First, because it corresponded with the traditions of the Spanish people; second, because they (the Spaniards) believed it would secure the liberal principles of the revolution; and third, because it would harmonize their form of government with those existing in nearly every part of Europe. But all these designs were dashed to pieces by the obstacles of reality. We had a monarchy, but no monarch. Among us we had not one of those dynasties that represent religious and national principles united to modern spirit, such as are represented by the dynasty of England; neither had we princes and kings like those who have formed, in diplomatic councils and on fields of battle, the unity of Italy and that of Germany. Our dynasties, some defeated in civil war and others dethroned by revolution, could not present, as a glorious title, the stability of the dynasties which even yet represent the genius of Peter the Great and Charles V. We were not united to the monarchical form of government by international treaties, like Belgium, Holland, Greece, and Roumania. We had to look for a king in foreign lands, running double risk-the exterior risk of disturbing the peace of Europe, and the interior risk of wounding the national sentiments. None of the powers who believed themselves concerned in the maintenance of the monarchical régime here smoothed our road. They all eluded giving us their concourse by respectful observations or

formal negatives. And sad experience soon demonstrated that the best thing for the domestic tranquillity of Spain, and the most certain for the peace and stability of Europe, would have been to keep ourselves in our own shell, and tranquilly and peacefully establish, as we do now, a modest republic.

But the Cortes, believing themselves committed to the introduction of a monarch, searched for one in foreign lands and brought him here. He was of an illustrious line and gallant temperament. He was united by political interests and recent records to the greatest powers of the world; to France by the war of 1859, to Prussia by the war of 1866, and to Great Britain by the establishment of the constitutional monarchy in Italy. He was instructed in the highest examples, and inclined to respect the national representation. He counted on the support of all the parties who effected the revolution, from the most conservative to the most radical; but, nevertheless, all these political, historic, and diplomatic advantages of the young and courageous prince were not enough, no! to resist the most earnest sentiment of our race-the national sentiment. This sentiment has opposed him in all his designs, and at last has vanquished him. This sentiment left him in such solitude that it was complete asphyxia. Whoever believes that there existed here a mysterious conspiracy against the young prince is deceived. The Cortes respected his rights; the ministers called to power seconded him zealously, and the ministers deposed obeyed him respectfully; the army fought for his authority, the towns received his commissioners, and justice was done in his name; nobody disputed any of his prerog atives, or murmured at any of his privileges; but nevertheless, under all the appearances of power, he felt that he was completely wanting in the highest and strongest power-the power which is born of public opinion, and which is based on the love of the people. And he renounced for himself and his family a crown of which he only felt the weight on his brows and not the dignity in his soul. What was to be done after this supreme moment? Was the King to be asked to withdraw his abdication? It would be unworthy of us. Should we return to the past and hand over to a dethroned dynasty the guardianship of the people? Impossible. Should we create a military dictatorship? Absurd. Should we revert to another period of provisional administration Dangerous.

Up to this there were two methods of solving all our revolutionary crises: During the period that might be called that of action, the juntas; during that of solutions, the Cortes. In the present instance we confined ourselves within the limits of the strictest legality. There was no need to have recourse to revolutionary expedients, and the juntas were useless. There were only political difficulties to be settled, and the Cortes naturally suggested themselves. In the absence of the supreme power, the Cortes took upon itself all power, and in so doing realized a thought which, if it had not been expressed, had been foreseen in the latest committee meetings. The exponent of the national will, borrowing its inspiration from the ideas uppermost in every mouth and the sentiment born in every heart, obeying the supreme laws of po litical necessity, faithful to the incontrovertible logic of facts, the Cortes proclaimed the republic-proclaimed it in the plenitude of its authority and the exercise of its power, after sober and solemn deliberations, uninfluenced by pressure from without or menace from within, leaving to a Cortes Constituyentes, which should be convoked in due season, and elected in entire freedom, the organization of powers within the republic. Thus it is that we possess a government national by its character, pop

ular by its nature, legitimate by its origin, solid by its organism, definitive in its foundation, stable by its long preparation, and with tendencies to preserve and strengthen the peace of Europe. Here, in those profound changes, is seen no violent revolution; no! on the contrary, we have but a necessary evolution. We had individual rights promulgated in formulas as ample as those of the Federal Constitution of the United States; we had the suffrage extended to every citizen; we had, although it might not have been all that we wished, great municipal and provincial autonomy; we found ourselves without a king by the renunciation of the throne by the monarch for himself and his descendants. Under these circumstances the Cortes, the true power of the state, have proclaimed the republic. All this is explained by the reasonable laws of logic, and all is built on the legitimate bases of the constitution.

The republic is not provisional; no, whatever its interior organism may be, the republic is definitive. Thus the legality of the republic has not been questioned by anybody in Spain. The Cortes, which provided for the absence of the monarch, and undertook the national defense in the epic years from 1808 to 1814; the Cortes, which abrogated the rights of Don Carlos to the ancient order of Spain; the Cortes, which hastened, as far as they could, the majority of Doña Isabel II; the Cortes, which recognized and sanctioned the dethronement of the Bourbon dynasty; the Cortes, the most permanent power in our nationality, inasmuch as the kings have disappeared and they have remained; the Cortes, as the proper incorporation of our feelings, proclaimed the republic, and an entire people in both continents, wherever our flag floats, has acknowledged and respected the legality of the proclamation.

Observe the conduct of the authorities. As soon as they received notice that the republic was proclaimed they gave it spontaneous greeting. The captain-general, as well as the civil governors, the magistrates of all the territories, as well as the alcaldes of all the towns, manifested their adhesion to the assembly and their obedience to the government. The conservative classes have recognized the necessity of this transformation, and the clergy have confessed that they hope to see religious independence and their right of association made more secure by the liberty of our recent institutions than by the protection of the last monarchies. The army has proclaimed the republic everywhere with fervid enthu

siasm.

It is necessary to destroy the false conceptions rooted in Europe respecting the conduct of our army. There is a common belief that it has risen of its own free will to erect a military dictatorship and assume its predominance over the other classes of society. The Spanish army, an army of liberty, of country, of independence, has some errors to its score, some shadows on its history. I repeat but the truth when I say those shadows are exceptional. Never has the Spanish army constituted a military dictatorship. In all times when oppression was hardest, arrogance most insolent, the principle of right forgotten, individual security trampled under foot, and the laws set at naught, the army, sprung from the people and inspired by the thought of the people, has turned its weapons against tyranny and in favor of liberty. Those antecedents satisfy us that in any contingencies which may arise in the future we shall possess an army for the country as for the republic.

It is most important that the false idea of our country being ungovernable and self-willed should be destroyed. A long separation from public life, by the blind faith she had in kings, eclipsed in her spirit those virtues she once showed for governing in the parliaments and municipalities of the middle age. But, with her conscience full of ideality and

her heart of enthusiasm, both brave and modest, valiant and prudent, as serene and as self-possessed in the chances of war as in political crises, accustomed to obey and respect the elective authorities-thanks to her deeply-seated municipal habits-with austere republican dignity, even when under the monarchy, and with the personal independence of the most illustrious races as the basis of her character; sometimes fanatic, but always so for ideas; disinterested even to abnegation, and patient even to martyrdom, it can well be assured that she will live the difficult but wholesome life of liberty.

Europe entire must understand that the most constant and tenacious desire of our nation is to govern herself. Our character is not open to those caprices which might cause us to fear a fall from the republican institutions to anarchy or a dictatorship. Whenever the Spanish people have made at the true opportunity a political progress, they have pre served it with true constancy. Since 1836 we have had constitutional institutions, in form more or less free, and we have never lost them, employing, even in the midst of the greatest revolutions, their proceedings to enter into full democracy. The government of the republic is to-day resolved to give to the people an electoral liberty so great and general that they may express their ideas and aspirations with a sincerity not always used. We will assiduously prevent all official and bureaucratic influence, and we will punish with equal severity the violent pressure of political parties and of the mob. We will give every security for the most timid to exercise their rights, and we will uphold the respect every elector owes to other electors and to his own sovereignty. Those who know the public life of those who have had the undeserved honor of having founded the republic, know we will faithfully keep our words.

The governments of Europe should have the same security. Our pro posals must make them comprehend, sooner or later, that we are a legal power, not composed in any manner of conspirators, but of legislators accustomed to frame and obey the laws.

And we, so jealous of our autonomy, of our independence, will never conspire against the autonomy or independence of other nations; so that. in our internal politics, as well as in our foreign relations, we have only to inspire ourselves with the eternal principles of justice.

Consequently, I have a special charge from all the members of the executive power to make it understood that our republic will not be a hot-bed of discord in Europe. These changes and transformations are completely internal, and have no relations whatever with the different political and international problems in the world. Our great separation from all European influence (which has sometimes mortified our Spanish pride) now serves providentially for the regeneration of this our beloved country. We do not owe anything to those who agitate the world from the great cities, which may be called the cosmopolitan cities, the capitals of intelligence and of ideas. We were considered a dead people, great because of our glories, but with the grandness of ruins, after the manner of those empires buried underneath the valleys of Asia. Spanish democracy, in generous vengeance for this forgetfulness, discussed her des tinies with herself, harmonizing the progressive ideas of the times with the national spirit. Thus she has never had, and has not now, that vagne cosmopolitanism which might cause alarm abroad, nor those Utopian dreams which might cause difficulties without number at home. We have a republic entirely our own, born of the national feeling. Even if we intended any other thing our geographical position imposes this policy on us, exclusively Spanish. It is unnecessary to say that we do not desire any annexations to or increase of our territory. A republic in which, like our own, there are so many municipal elements, cannot be a conquering

republic. Its own nature subjects it to this idea, to organize its powers in the best possible manner, and to educate its citizens into elevation. We have territory enough for our activity in the world. We desire to preserve it, and we will preserve it at all cost and in all its integrity. But we should be ungrateful if we attempted to increase it, and all the more by conquests, either directly, which might expose us to the undesirable glories of war and to the dangerous chances of Cæsarism; or indirectly, which might cause us to forget in others the principle we love above all in ourselves-the principle of national autonomy.

I repeat it, and will do so a thousand times. For the independence of Spain, for the dignity of Spain, we have the same worship as all the Spanish generations. We neither wish nor need anybody to recognize our right of governing ourselves. We feel ourselves so equal to it, that the conviction of our strength and the austere conscience of our authority are enough for us. The great nation that occupies the north of the American continent, in spite of the distance, has immediately recognized us, and has communicated to us its fervent sympathy for this nation, which has discovered with prodigies of genius and valor the road of liberty and democracies. The Swiss Confederation has just followed the example, and has blessed our new-born republic from its holy mountains. These two acts of two free countries, of two democratic countries, of two republican countries, of two countries friends of all the powers, strengthen us and demonstrate to us that they have no fear of our not deserving the greatness which the new institutions promise to us, or of our staining with excesses the name of modern democracy. I have a right to hope that the rest of the world, after my loyal explanations, will hold back no longer. It would be unworthy of me, it would not be representing the energy of my nation and of my race, if I placed my faith in fantastic dreams. We have great and immense difficulties to overcome; complications will appear in the pursuance of our line of action, and the dangerous change from one form of government to another. They have never been hidden from our sight and our patriotism. What we can say is that, for the whole time we occupy our posts, we are resolved to strengthen interior order, and to respect the peace of all Europe. But, ah, let not the foreign nations ask us for energy, and then deny us the only thing we ask them their moral help-so that, as we have founded our republic in legality, we may consolidate it in the most perfect order and the closest amity with all the nations and governments of the earth.

If your excellency will look into the ideas I have expressed, you will find it easy to second the designs of the executive power of the republic; and I hope that, from your zeal for good service, you will be able to expound them at a fitting time and occasion to your minister of foreign affairs, to whom I hope you will read, and, if he desires it, give a copy of the present dispatch.

EMILIO CASTELAR.

No. 375.]

No. 431.

Mr. Duffie to Mr. Davis.

UNITED STATES CONSULATE,

Cadiz, July 27, 1873. (Received August 26.)

SIR: I beg to inform you that hostilities commenced between the dockyard and volunteer forces on the 22d instant, at 11.15 a. m., and con