thing the inner nature of which is in accord with its external appearance." In his letter to the Athenæum on the thesis of the debate, he said that it was "superfluous" to run over, after Señor Costa, "the virulence of their social and political malady" (p. 115). "It is," he said, "traditional that public power is not sought or used in Spain to uphold the law, secure justice, protect culture, enhance prosperity, or direct the life of the people" (p. 116). But one reaches the lowest depth of repugnance when this man, who sacrifices "Anarchists" to defend such a system, observes that Spain is "really in a state of anarchy [his italics], in the full sense of the word, since all the legitimate organs of its political life are atrophied and inert" (p. 118).
After Señor Maura's candid description of the system, in the defence of which (and the Church) he allowed Ferrer to be murdered, we will turn to the present Cabinet. Señor Moret did not take part in the debate, but a speech of his, delivered in the Cortes (January 27, 1888), is quoted as one that "paints with a master-hand" the corruption of Spain's form of government. The praise is not too high, but I cannot reproduce it at length. Suffice it to say that he denounces "this civilisation of which we are so proud" in unmeasured terms. He has no pity for the "burdens and corruptions"—of the machine over which he presides to-day. He draws a vivid picture of the repellent corruption of an election to Parliament, in which it does not matter how the elector votes, as the whole thing turns on the success of the candidate in buying one or the other local cacique at the lowest price.
Then we have quoted another, and perhaps the most distinguished, member of the present Cabinet, Count Romanones. He deplores (in the work, Biologia de los partidos politicos, p. 128) "all the evils of our public administration, stupefying the working of the Parliamentary function, all the vices which warp the efficacy of the army and the suffrage and thwart the course of justice." The "whole atmosphere of our political life" is tainted by cacique [Tammany]: "like microbes, they make the regions where they are found uninhabitable." But Count Romanones is inhabiting that region to-day.
