RECENT IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN 23 



York. New York is nearly the foremost, and certainly the 

 richest and most populous, State in the Union, and when we 

 find that Spain is by no means lagging far behind the pace 

 set by the Empire State in the matter of education, we can 

 see that a prejudiced view — based upon antiquated figures and 

 compared with recent development here — has been entertained 

 of Spain in educational matters. She is not as far ahead as 

 she ought to be ; but she is not so far behind as hostile critics 

 would make out. 



The same thing holds true of the statement that Spain is 

 "priest-ridden," that there are too many priests, friars, and 

 monks there. It may be ; and the enjoyment of the endow- 

 ments of a State Church and ancient privileges may have 

 dulled their energy and rendered them less active and strenu- 

 ous in their sacred callings than our clergy. A keen and 

 exhaustive study of the situation could alone determine that. 

 Nevertheless I saw and conversed with as bright, keen, and 

 eager-faced priests in Spain as I ever have in New York. 

 When stress is laid upon the mere numbers as the root of the 

 criticism, a little comparison will do much to clear the mind. 



When I was in Madrid a Radical newspaper published a 

 severe article in which it asserted that the vast number of 

 celibates (priests, monks and friars) — and it particularly gave 

 the figures for the city and province of Madrid — was an evil, 

 particularly because it meant the withdrawal from civil life 

 of many individuals who might otherwise be the honored heads 

 of flourishing famiHes. But the illustrated journal "A. B. C." 

 replied in a telling article in which it quoted statistics to show 

 that in the city and province of Madrid there were already far 

 more bachelors above the age of thirty years, who were lay- 

 men, than the entire number of religious mentioned, and it 

 sarcastically asked why "they did not become the honored 

 heads of flourishing families" for the welfare of Spain. In 

 Spain there were in 1900 (I have no later figures) some 11,000 

 male religious — priests, monks, friars, and lay religious — and 

 these, in a population of 18,617,000. gives about an average 

 of one religious or clergyman to every 1,692 persons. By 

 the United States religious census for 1906 (there are no 

 figures available for 1900) there were 164,830 ministers and 

 clergy of all kinds among a population that year of 84,246,250. 

 This gives our own country one clergyman to every 511 per- 



