The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-08
CASTELAR, ON SLAVERY.


slavery, Senor Castelar, made a speech viii CHI
created profound impression throughout
Europe as noticed in our cable dispatches at
the time He said:--
Senores Deputies:-E do not under
stand the law which is being discussed, or it
proposes the gradual abolition of slavery
My amendment proposes immediate aboli-
ton. Those who formerly sustained slavery
now support gradual abolition. As for us,
we have always sustained the contrary imme-
diate abolition. l will now prove by reason
by historical records, by statistics, that my
idea is the only one promising salvation, and
that the idea of the committee and of the
government has within it the germs of great
and fearful catastrophes.
desire to avoid great calamity-the ruin
of our national honor. If you would have
nations prosper, shine, increase, think, and
labor glorlously, lnfuse into them an idea of
progress. All people who have obeyed great
ideas have been elevated to riches and glory.
Every nation which has obeyed effete ideas
has been ruined, and has lost its influence
over the human conscience. I come, then,
to ask that the Spanish nation shall elevate
itself on the high plane of social principles,
which are the secret of all prosperity and
grandeur. We astonished the world at the
beginning of the revolution of September
We did SO because upon waking up to modern
lie philosophical theories were disconnected,
as well as those of a social and political char
acter, founded as they all were, upon the
supposition of our irremediable decadence.
For this reason our resurrection surprised
the world. All hoped that we would give the
first example of transformation due to the
intelligence and to the force Of p5opie
abandoned to itself. We ought to give the
example not only TO Europe, but likewise to
America. We shall always be an American
power. Historic deeds, however extraordi-
nary they may have been, run back through
many ages, and Spaniards cannot by their
arms, nor can Americans by their ingratitude,
obliterate from memory the fact of the dis
covery of America, which is our work.
America, notwithstanding her independence,
an act logical and natural, will ever continue
to be the delight of our spirit. And when
the Americans (Spanish) shall seek, with q
view to checking the greedy impulse Of the
Saxon race, to establish great confederacy,
made up of different confederacies, in order
to invoke the fundamental unity of their
origin, they will be compelled to recur to the
language which we speak, and the blood
which courses our veins. But more To
httain this end it is necessary for us to hold
in these American lands what is ours-a
policy truly democratic.
The revolution of September was an auspi-
cious moment for the initiation of this policy.
Providence favored us. After many useless
attempts, the submarine cable, giving sort
of spine to our planet, passed and transmitted
from one continent to the other its respective
ideas, its respective sentiments. How better
could we have used this marvel of industry
than by its metallic fibres to have transmitted
in the sparks of the lightning itself the aboli-
tion of colonial regime for the whites and the
abolition of the servile regime for the ne
groes? We did not do so; and some day or
other we shall repent of it, however sad and
useless that may then be. And still it is said
from the Conservative benches that we must
await representatives from Cuba. 1 do
not understand how this is demanded by
those who have held our Antilla subject to
exceptional rules You submitted Cuba to a
military despotism. Our kings, who were
constitutional here, were over there absolu-
fists; our ministers, who were responsible
here, over there were arbitrary. You held
the press under censure and its opinions
under gag. You disposed of the rights of
the people without hearing them, and of their
tribunes without consulting them. The land
of liberty stopped with the Canaries and
when the new Spanish world commenced,
then began the dominion of absolutism which
no people can endure without great political
suffering. Never did you recognize the right
of the colonies to be represented here, and
when we asked that there should be received
the most unfortunate of them all, you pro-
claimed our incompetency, and asked that the
whites should come here to decide the fate of
the negroes; that the masters should come to
decide the lot of the slaves, ah! of the slaves,
free without them and without us; free in
spite of them and of us; free against them
and against us; free by reason of their being
children of God, by the sovereignty of nature,
because of their being members of the human
family. And every power which fails to
recognize these primordial rights, whatever
may be the law, whatever convenience
may dictate, commits assassination upon the
human conscience, an assassination upon the
soul-a crime which celestial rage Furnishes,
and which damns itself with an everlasting
infamy in the hell of history. (Applause)
The question as to whether or not negroes
are property shall not delay my argument
have never believed such an absurdity. This
law, judged by the light of my prin ciples,
cannot be approved. These enlancjpddOs,
who live under a transmissible patron for
many years, will be oppressed and driven
about upon the earth. These old men and
women, who will only become free when they
shall become useless remind me of those
serfs whom the ancents consecrated to Escu-
lapius, leaving them to die on an island in the
Tiber. This law will emancipate the negroes
in fifty years. Gradual epochs in the matter
of abolition are horrible; they engender all the
servile wars, the most bloody of all wars 1t has
been attempted thousand times, and has
always failed. The slave has a foretaste OF
his liberty, and struggles against his irons
The master knows that he is going to lose
his slave, and so squeezes out the last dcop'
of his sweat upon the field. When emanci
patton comes, that which is given up to free
dom is a dead body No; the interest of the
master, who desires to preserve his property
and the rights of the slave who desires to b.
free. cannot be served at one and the saml