The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-03 00:00:00

question ? Nothing more nor less than the dread
which exists of poverty, increased by a dread of
honest work. No one now is content to be poor,

. . . and as every one wishes to be rich at
any cost, we must needs have swarms of office
seekers, both regular and vagabond, intriguing in
the press or conspiring in the clubs ; to say no-
thing of military leaders who resort to promincia-
mientos for promotion, or sergeants who, Judas
like, sell their officers' blood, as on the 22nd of
June of last year."
After speaking of the benefits conferred on the

human race through the labours of the monks, in
every art and science known to man, to the
wondrous deeds of charity that brought about the
redemption of captives, the foundation 'of hospitals
for the sick, for the aged, and for orphans, the
orator next referred in the following terms to' that
order which is the glory and the pride of every
countryman of Ignatius and Francis Xavier : "Its
primacy is seen in its very name, for it has a
name which is above every other name. There
is no doubt as to its origin, or that the master and
the disciples are one, for both are alike abhorred
by the spirit of evil. Thus, as it bears its august
name, it reproduces too the symbols, and reflects
the mysteries, connected with that name. It had
the superhuman obedience of Isaac, and the divine
foreknowledge of Joseph. Having been sold into
slavery by philosophers, it taught the very Pha-
raohs to drink of the cup of wisdom ; it ascended
Golgotha as one condemned, and there was loaded
with calumnies and opprobrium; and one by one
it suffered every agony of Calvary."
He next refers to the universal desire for their
complete restoration, even in infidel or heretic
countries, and quotes the statistics published by
the Revue des deux Mondes, to show that even in
France the number of convents has gone on in-
creasing till it now amounts to upwards of 14,000.
A generation has passed away since they were
robbed or suppressed in Spain, so that no one
can now impute to them the bankruptcy and beg-
gary that afflict the country, nor the intellectual
darkness amid which the only names visible are
those of Balmez and Donoso Cortes, whose writings
in support of the Faith are worthy of that six-
teenth " century of Giants." Claros then pro-
ceeds to lament the corruption of the present day,
the extravagance in dress as seen in the wives and
daughters of " some of our poor employes, decked
out in lace and with trains that a duchess of the
times of Charles 111. or Ferdinand VI. would have
envied ;" the general love of idleness, as visible in
every department of the State. You once found
fault," said he, " with the excessive number of
priests and religious required for a population of
16,000,000 ; and now you have 500 generals and
11,000 other officers for an army which never
amounts to 100,000 men ; and you have from
60,000 to 70,000 employes for the worst admini-
stration known to Europe, an administration which
takes eighteen years to dispose of one question
only, and which allows 40,000 petitions in one
department alone to remain unanswered. People
used to complain of the robbers of the Sierra
Morena; but one single bubble company, or one
single speculator, will do more robbery now in a
day than all the bandits in every Sierra in Spain
did in the reign of Ferdinand VII. And what shall
be said of the religious spirit of the governing
classes ? Is it not evident, from the pass that
things have come to since Liberalism took to re-
generating Spain ? Are we not asking for the re-
ligious orders in most Catholic Spain the freedom
allowed them by the Moslem in Turkey, and the
heretic in England?" •
"The 22nd of June is near at hand," continued
Senor Claros ; "let us celebrate the sad anniversary.
• . . Thirty years ago, the infamous assassins
whom the gold of the clubs had hired, thrust
their daggers into the hearts of unarmed and vir-
tuous monks here in the peace and quiet of the
cloister . . . . and not a soldier or an officer
moved from the barracks to hinder the foul deed,
in the name of Christian justice or of the ancient
and proverbial chivalrousness of Spaniards. Thirty
years passed by, and the officers of the Spanish
army saw those same dazaers, that had been for-
merly steeped in the blood of innocent religious,
and twice stained by contact with the gold by
which they had been prostituted, thrust into the
breasts of their noble companions." This allusion
to the noble fidelity of the officers who refused h la
mort to join in the revolt got up by Prim's ser-
geants last year, had a most wonderful effect ; and
the speaker had the house altogether with him
from that moment. " Would that I had time,"
he went on to say, "to draw a parallel between
the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the age
of the monks and the age of the newspaper writers.
Allow me to offer one example only. A short time
ago, the intelligent and highborn Liberalism of the
present day sought to give a proof of its power by
recovering one of the gems torn from the Crown of
Castille. The occupation of one island only, :a
fatal island for us . . . cost us more men and
money than the conquest of Peru, and yet we had
to abandon it, for we had no Pizarro there. But
why do I say, of Peru ? That island cost us more
men and money than the conquest of the whole
of America. 30,000 men, and 300,000,000 of
money, could not enable us to conquer the half of
Santo Domingo. And *yet a few Dominicans,
merely by the force of their preaching, gave the
island its Spanish administration of old, and the
name of their holy founder. A few Jesuits, with
no other arms than the Cross, yet managed to
colonize and rule the whole of Paraguay." Fi-
nally, referring to his own past efforts in the cause
of the old religion of Spain, throughout which his
guiding maxim had been, fidelity to the Church, In
ipsa, et cum ipsd, et per ipsam, the illustrious anti-
liberal deputy concluded thus: "In the name, then,
of that order of ideas which you are here to repre-
sent; I demand the solemn, complete, most just,
and, above all, legal restoration of the religious
orders. But I wish no one to abstain from voting
it. After haying demanded it in the name of reli-
gion, of order, and justice, I now demand it in the
name of liberty. Do you wish to know where true
liberty alone is found? There, where the Word
which lies not has told you that it is found. There,
where the Spirit of God is. Do you wish to know
what true liberty is ? It is to love in freedom that
which it is our duty to love. The contrary is to
become enslaved to the passions. Do you wish to
know what is the noblest liberty ? It is that of the
Catholic religious : the heroic liberty of Leonidas
and his companions at Thermopylae; the liberty
of Dasiz and Velarde and those noble soldiers who,
from that very barrack beside us, hurled death
upon the tyrants of their country, knowing, the
while, that their own deaths would be the certain
consequence—the heroic liberty of sacrifice."
I have not space left to give you extracts from
the magnificent (extemporised) speech of Senor
Nocedal in reply to the Marquesde Pidal who,
after a very powerful defence of the religious
orders, thought proper to throw the Liberals a sop
by admitting that in the eighteenth century the
monks and nuns had become unworthy of their
sacred calling. I must, however, give you one
extract as a specimen of the staunch fidelity of the
growing party whom Nocedal now leads in Con-
gress : " Yes, gentleinen ; they who, like me, have
now but a few grey hairs on their heads,—they who
remember the first years of childhood—they who
were wont to see the habit of St. Dominick or of
St. Ignatius worn by our old masters and teachers,
by those who then directed us in the ways of wis-
dom and virtue, which not all of us, perhaps, have
followed since can never call to mind those
sacred habits, those dearly-loved masters, without
tears in their eyes, or without their hearts beat-
ing joyfully and gratefully at the remembrance. I
cannot speak of the sons of the Spaniard Domi-
nick de Guzman, and of the lessons of that true
philosophy once given in the Convent of St.
Thomas Aquinas, without the profoUndest emotion
of my heart ; it was there I learned the little of that
knowledge which I now possess. Nor can I think
of that modest habit borne by the members of
the Society of Jesus, without proudly lifting up
my head and saying : " That Company that has
been so reviled by the impiety of the Revolu-
tionists, -,was a Spanish one ; it was in Spain, as
God willed it, that that heroic saint first saw the
light ; he who is the glory of all Europe, the glory