742 



SPAIN. 



same positions. Canovas again took the presi- 

 dency, without a portfolio ; Elduayen, a confi- 

 dant of King Alfonso, resumed the direction of 

 Foreign Affairs ; Cos-Gayon, that of Finance ; 

 and Komero Robledo, after Canovas the most 

 prominent leader and orator of the Conserva- 

 tive party, that of the Interior. Marshal Que- 

 sada, the Minister of War, is the most eminent 

 of Spanish generals, who commanded the Army 

 of the North for nine years, until removed in 

 pursuance of an order of his predecessor limit- 

 ing the duration of the higher commands to 

 three years. Silvela, the Minister of Justice, is 

 a Conservative of moderate views, distinguished 

 for political talents and eloquence. Pidal, Min- 

 ister of Commerce, in which department is em- 

 braced the direction of public instruction, was 

 well known for his extreme Clericalism. His 

 appointment therefore excited misgivings. 



The Republicans. The new ministry, soon after 

 taking office, came into sharp conflict with the 

 Republicans. The Zorillists, who advocate rev- 

 olutionary methods, were repressed by the 

 Sagasta Government, while the Possiblists, led 

 by Castelar, whose aims are governed by con- 

 stitutional principles, were permitted to hold 

 their political banquets and publish their news- 

 papers. The banquet that was announced for 

 February 13, in commemoration of the procla- 

 mation of the Spanish Republic in 1873, was 

 forbidden by the Canovas ministry. The criti- 

 cisms in the public press provoked by this de- 

 cree were answered by a wholesale application 

 of the Draconic press laws. 



The ministry directed its main efforts to the 

 extirpation of revolutionary republicanism in 

 the army. Zorilla kept up an effective propa- 

 ganda in the army from his retreat in Switzer- 

 land. The accession of the Conservatives gave 

 a stimulus to the revolutionary movement. In 

 March, 1884, the Government believed that it 

 had unearthed a new military conspiracy. On 

 March 16 numerous arrests were made among 

 all ranks of the service, from generals down to 

 sergeants. Non-commissioned officers were 

 particularly accessible to the teaching of the 

 revolutionary agents, and most of those impris- 

 oned were of that class. The authorities failed 

 to discover evidence against the accused. After 

 a six weeks' investigation the majority of the 

 prisoners, including all the commissioned offi- 

 cers, were released. 



Shortly before the April election there were 

 rumors of intended insurrections and military 

 plots. The Republicans accused the ministry 

 of spreading the reports with the intention of 

 destroying the last vestige of electoral freedom. 

 At the time of the election and for a few days 

 after there were isolated disturbances in vari- 

 ous provinces in the north and the south as 

 well as in the center of Spain. Telegraph- 

 wires were cut, rails torn up, railroad-bridges 

 destroyed or undermined, in one case resulting 

 in a catastrophe whereby many discharged 

 soldiers and country people lost their lives. 

 These murderous proceedings were indignantly 



denounced by the Zorillist press. There were 

 simultaneous attempts, however, of an un- 

 doubtedly revolutionary character. Bands of 

 Republican insurgents appeared in various 

 places and committed excesses. In the ranks 

 of the army there were instances of sedition. 

 Sergeants deserted their regiments and roamed 

 about the country urging the people to rise. 

 A band of thirty men led by an ex-officer 

 named Mongado crossed the frontier from 

 France into Navarra, seized a custom-house 

 post, and were the masters of that mountain 

 district until they were pursued by the troops, 

 their captain and several others slain, a num- 

 ber taken prisoners, and the rest driven back 

 over the border. About the same time a num- 

 ber of officers and soldiers with mutinous in- 

 tent left the military depot of Santa Coloma in 

 Catalonia, but were soon captured by pursuing 

 troops. The object of these isolated attempts 

 was probably to keep alive the revolutionary 

 feeling among the Republicans and to unsettle 

 the public mind and destroy confidence in the 

 stability of the existing system of government. 

 The Mongado incursion led to reclamations by 

 the Madrid Cabinet, to which the French Gov- 

 ernment replied in a way that failed to sat- 

 isfy the Spanish authorities. 



The Election. The alleged discovery of a mili- 

 tary plot was supposed by the radicals to be a 

 ruse adopted to give the Government an excuse 

 for exercising more than the usual administra- 

 tive interference in the elections. In intrust- 

 ing the Conservatives with the dissolution of 

 the Cortes the King enabled them to obtain any 

 proportionate representation of the parties they 

 chose to have in the new Cortes, and to turn 

 the large Liberal majority into an equally large 

 Conservative majority. The provincial and 

 municipal administrations were still in the 

 hands of the Liberals, but the local bodies 

 could be dissolved, suspended, replaced by 

 commissions, or fined. The most effective and 

 most dreaded method an opposition party pos- 

 sesses of bringing pressure to bear is by elect- 

 oral abstention, opening the way to extra- 

 constitutional agitation. The Republicans now 

 threatened to retire from the parliamentary 

 contest. In respect to the two Liberal mo- 

 narchic parties the ministers pursued the policy 

 of favoring the Dynastic Left, which aimed at 

 the restoration of the democratic Constitution 

 of 1869, and reducing to a minimum the repre- 

 sentation of the Fusion party of moderate Lib- 

 erals formed by the union of the Centralists, 

 led by Martinez Campos and Alonso Martinez, 

 with the Constitutional Liberals of Sagasta. 

 The Fusionists raised an outcry over the arbi- 

 trary means taken to control or supersede the 

 municipalities and provincial deputations elect- 

 ed under the administration of Sagasta. The 

 municipalities determine the composition of 

 the electoral bureaux for the congressional 

 elections, and the provincial legislatures co-op 

 erate in the renewal of the retiring half of the 

 Senate. Three years before, the Sagasta minis- 



