A REVIEW OF SUNDAY LEGISLATION IN CENTURY NINETEEN. NO. 8.
BY PERCY T. MAGAN.
WHAT THE PAPACY HAS DONE FOR SPAIN.
I SAID in a previous number of this paper that Rome ruined every country she ever ruled. This is even so. In no land on earth has Rome enjoyed such enormous power as in Spain. Of her power over the race of Israel in that peninsula, I have already spoken, and of her power over the Saracen invaders of Spain, I will speak later. Suffice to say at present that both of these unfortunate people were, by cruelties untold and unspeakable, driven out or killed. The last of the heretics was exterminated in 1612. Then says Buckle, the prince of historians:—
Now, for the first time, the church was really triumphant. For the first time there was not a heretic to be seen between the Pyrenees and the Straits of Gibraltar. All were orthodox, and all were loyal. Every inhabitant of that great country obeyed the church, and feared the king. And from this happy combination, it was believed that the prosperity and grandeur of Spain were sure to follow. The name of Philip III. was to be immortal, and posterity would never weary of admiring that heroic act by which the last remains of an infidel race were cast out from the land. Those who had even remotely participated in the glorious consummation, were to be rewarded by the choicest blessings. Themselves and their families were under the immediate protection of heaven. The earth should bear more fruit and the trees should clap their hands. Instead of the thorn should come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier, the myrtle. A new era was now inaugurated, in which Spain, purged of her heresy, was to be at ease, and men living in safety, were to sleep under the shade of their own vineyards, sow their gardens in peace, and eat the fruit of the trees they had planted.
These were the promises held out by the church, and believed by the people. It was164told how that now the arts, the commerce, the wealth and magnificence of Spain would flourish and increase as never before, ridden of the heretical Jew and the idolatrous Mohammedan. Her ships were to plow the seas and crowd the ports of other shores, her soldiers were to wreathe themselves with laurels of victory, till the sun should never set on her dominions, and all earth should do homage at the feet of her scepter of greatness.
But 1613 was the apex of the pinnacle of her power. In that boasted hour of her might—all heretics dead or driven out—the lowly Christian can hear, even at this late day, the death knell of her prestige and glory. Intolerance in religion was the policy of Rome. But “intolerance in religion” is a dire disease which eats into the vitals of all truth and progress, religious, industrial, commercial, and intellectual.
It was even so with Spain; from that very day her glory waned away till naught is left to-day but the mistiest shade of a shadow. The church had driven out the men who cultivated her rice and her cotton, and not being cultivated they grew no more. She had expelled from her borders those who had manufactured her silk and paper, and the ceaseless humming of the looms and buzzing of the mills no longer reverberated upon the breezes. The olives and the vines ceased to yield their increase, for they were neglected.
In the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth, Spain enjoyed great repute for the manufacture of gloves, which were made in enormous quantities and shipped to many parts, being particularly valued in England and in France, and being also exported to the Indies. But Martinez de Mata, who wrote in the year 1655, assures us that at that time this source of wealth had disappeared, the manufacture of gloves having quite ceased, though formerly, he says, it had existed in every city in Spain.
In every department all power and life disappeared. The Spanish troops were defeated at Rocroy in 1643; and several writers ascribe to that battle the destruction of the military reputation of Spain. This however was only one of many symptoms. In 1556 it was proposed to fit out a small fleet; but the fisheries on the coasts had so declined that it was found impossible to find sailors enough to man even the few ships which were required. The charts which had been made were either lost or neglected; and the ignorance of the Spanish pilots became so notorious that no one was willing to trust them. As to the military service, it is stated, in an account of Spain, late in the seventeenth century, that most of the troops had deserted their colors, and that the few who were faithful were clothed in rags, and were dying of hunger. Another account describes that once mighty kingdom as utterly unprotected; the frontier towns ungarisoned; the fortifications delapidated and crumbling away; the magazines without ammunition; the arsenals empty; the workshops unemployed; and even the art of building ships entirely lost.
I might go on interminably, to show what papal power has done for Spain. It was ruin, ruin, ruin on every hand. To this condition was Spain brought by Roman Catholicism and the Inquisition. And in this terrible condition she is to-day. What news have the cables brought us from Spain during the last few months?—National bankruptcy, talk of a dictator and anarchy, her flag is almost unknown on the seas, her wares and fabrics crowd not the marts of the world. Not a solitary ring is heard from her intellectual anvils, if she has any; only a deathlike silence answers when her name is called in any department of knowledge.
I know of no more fitting words with which to close this sketch of Spain, the most finished product of the Roman Catholic machine, than those of Buckle in his superb portrayal of her deathlike lethargy:—
Content with what has been already bequeathed, they [the Spaniards] are excluded from that great European movement, which, first clearly perceptible in the sixteenth century, has ever since been steadily advancing, upsetting old opinions, destroying old follies, reforming and improving on every side, influencing even such barbarous countries as Russia and Turkey, but leaving Spain unscathed. While the human intellect has been making the most prodigious unheard-of strides, while discoveries in every quarter are simultaneously pressing upon us, and coming in such rapid and bewildering succession that the strongest sight, dazzled by the glare of their splendor, is unable to contemplate as a whole; while other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen looming in the distance, whence they are now obscurely working on the advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy feelings which are the invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the veil is being rudely torn, and nature, violated at all points, is forced to disclose her secrets, and reveal her structure, her economy, and her laws to the indomitable energy of man; while Europe is ringing with the noise of intellectual achievements; . . . while, amidst this general din and excitement, the public mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed and agitated,—Spain sleeps on, untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving no impressions from the rest of the world, and making no impressions upon it. There she lies at the further extremity of the Continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the feelings and knowledge of the Middle Ages. And what is the worst symptom of all she is satisfied with her own condition. . . . All these things conspiring together, produce in their aggregate that melancholy exhibition to which we give the collective name of Spain.
This is what Rome has done for Spain, and, as I intend to show in the next number of this paper, this is what she will most certainly do for the United States.