part in building up. That which violence wins for us to-day another act of violence may wrest from us to-morrow. Those stages of progress alone are durable which have rooted themselves in the mind and conscience of mankind before receiving the final sanction of legislation. The only means of realising what is good is to teach it by education and propagate it by example.”
These were the real sentiments of the man who was shot on the charge of having led or inspired a violent rising of obviously hopeless character; and M. Naquet expressly adds that these ideas took deeper and deeper root in the mind of his “noble friend” in the later years. But, the astonished reader will ask, why was not the testimony of so authoritative a man as Naquet brought forward at his trial? Listen. “I communicated this crucial fact,” M. Naquet proceeds, “to his noble defender, Captain Francisco Galcerán, but he was not allowed to read my letter, any more than the others which were received from England and France in exculpation of his client.” We shall see that this is only one of the “crucial facts” that were suppressed by the servants of the Spanish State and Church.[1]
Another French writer who knew him, André Morizet, gives the same testimony in L’Humanité. “Intellectually,” he says, “Ferrer was not one of us. He was one of those who prove refractory to all ideas of organisation, and expect the renovation of the old world solely by the development of freedom of conscience... He not only kept aloof from the action of political parties, but even Trades Unionism had little interest for him.” The last phrase must not be taken too strictly, however.
From distant Italy comes the same testimony. In an article in La Ragione (Rome, October 10) Oddo Marinelli writes: “Fifteen years in Paris, in constant expectation of the revolution which was to regenerate his country, had caused him to lose all hope that Spain would rise again through the efforts of revolutionaries... Having taken part in the many attempts at revolution engineered by Zorrilla, he came to the
- ↑ The whole article must be read, in the Nineteenth Century, November. In conversation with me M. Naquet expressed his great pleasure of being allowed to vindicate his friend in one of our leading reviews.
