6o ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



saw Ferrer? It seems as if it were done with the motive of 

 accenting the Church as a prosecuting witness. 



As a matter of fact "El Siglo Futuro" is not a church paper. 

 It is the Carlist paper, and merely incidentally, as part and 

 parcel of its politics of Throne and Church, puts forward 

 CathoHcism. Of course the newspaper man was "a Catholic 

 journahst," but to have called him a Carlist would have left 

 out much of the peculiar attitude of Mr. Archer. 



Then he insinuates that the authorities put Ferrer in such 

 a woe-begone garb in the rueda, or group of prisoners, that 

 his recognition by Seiior Colldeforns was a foregone conclu- 

 sion. In other words, he charges deception on the part of 

 the court, without a single fact to support it. The law of 

 recognizing and identifying the accused is plain (Articles 422 

 and 424) : "The rueda must be constituted of at least six 

 persons of similar appearance to the person who is to be iden- 

 tified." As Ferrer was completely shaven when captured, and 

 if he were allowed no toilet accessories while in prison, as 

 Mr. Archer declares, he must have been covered with a gray, 

 stubby beard, which would necessarily make his identification 

 amid six others similar to him very difficult to Senor Collde- 

 forns. 



So much for the analysis and reasoning indulged in by Mr. 

 Archer. When his whole article is gone over in this manner, 

 the fact stands out pre-eminently that there was evidence 

 against Ferrer which even Mr. Archer cannot put out of the 

 way. Space forbids a complete analysis of the entire article, 

 and a discussion of Mr. Archer's statement that "the documen- 

 tary proofs consisted of two papers." In fact, there were fifty 

 odd files of dockets of them offered in evidence, consisting of 

 correspondence, circulars, reports, and memoranda of all kinds. 



Yet even with Mr. Archer's special pleading — for he does 

 not seem to have endeavored to interview Seiior Colldeforns, 

 or to analyze the dockets of the documentary evidence, or even 

 look over the original evidence testified and sworn to by the 

 witnesses — he concludes that : "I am not at all sure that, had 

 Ferrer been fairly tried under reasonable rules of evidence 

 (query, under English common-law evidence), he would have 

 got oflF scot-free." 



This is certainly a vindication from the rampant assertions 

 that were made that the Catholic Church had "railroaded" 



