McCLURE'S, ARCHER AND FERRER 6i 



Ferrer to death. Judicial errors may be made in any country; 

 but it is quite another thing to say that a person was done to 

 death without trial and without witnesses. We Catholics only 

 ask that in these matters the same yardstick be used to measure 

 events in Spain as would be used to measure events in New 

 York or Oklahoma. 



Ill 



I have been asked whether Ferrer's previous character and 

 teachings may not have had something to do with his con- 

 demnation. This question cannot be answered by any one 

 outside of Spain, for he did not keep himself by any means 

 aloof from the events which counted against him. There were 

 some six revolutionary events before the July riots ; he was 

 on hand at every one of them. It may have been a coincidence, 

 but it was a coincidence that had a sinister aspect. One in- 

 stance is the bomb explosion of Alay 31, 1906, when the King 

 and his young bride narrowly escaped instant death on the 

 Calle Mayor, Madrid. The man who threw the bomb, which 

 killed ten persons, and who was executed for it, was Mateo 

 Morral, a professor in La Escuela Moderna, placed in that 

 position in Madrid by Ferrer. Ferrer, at that time, was in 

 Madrid, living in the same block with Morral, and was visited 

 from time to time by him and various noted anarchists. Fer- 

 rer was arrested, along with many others, and kept for eight 

 months in the Model Prison in Madrid, but, while many cir- 

 cumstances pointing to his complicity were brought out, no 

 evidence directly connecting him with the bomb-throwing was 

 discovered. It is absolutely untrue that there was a special 

 court organized to try him on that occasion. But these ques- 

 tionable facts and circumstances may have weighed against 

 him when it came to a question of clemency. 



Ferrer was not a man of much education. He was the 

 founder of a school, but never wrote a book. His writings in 

 correspondence and his verses are exhibitions of passion rather 

 than reason. He was the type of man who is leader by virtue 

 of his ability to arrange things and provide the means. Of 

 his life I need say little. He was born in Alella, in the province 

 of Barcelona, and became a railway brakeman, and then con- 

 ductor, had some trouble in smuggling on the French frontier. 



