The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-10
CAsrrIAR.S GREAT SPEECH.


Castelars great speech, delivered in the
Senores Diputados / rise to explain the
interpelIstjon of which have given notice to
the Government respecting their interior ana
exterior policy. The Republican minority,
through circumstances outside Of our VIII,
have not been able to exercise the grand
tribunate the opposition ought ever to have
in this place Nevertheless the circumstances
which have occurred since the end of July
are grave and extraordinary, and the passing
moments are, gentlemen, moments supreme.
We must try, now or never, to found IN
Spain liberty and legal authority rise not
for sterile recriminations. rise to procure the
common accord of all in founding the reign
of liberty! Let us review impartially all that
has happened Our sessions were suspended
and tho Carlst instruction arose-the Gov
ernment assumed the dictatorship. Our ses-
sions were resumed and the republican insur-
rection broke out. The Government asked and
obtained dictatorship ampler and more legal.
Notwithstanding this grave amplitude, the
Government have abused their authority,
exceeded their faculties, trampled laws under
foot they had no right to trample upon, and
violated guarantees we believed secured, not
only by written sanction but by higher
sanction-that of natural right divine! To
this there has been added a struggle between
the political and ecclesiastical power; the disap-
DeA1aQCe
the reinforcement of those most radical-aU
and everything confounded and complicated
with the pending clerical reforms and the
election of the monarch. Gentlemen,
the perturbation is so great that it is neces-
sary to record the simplest and most essential
principles of justice Respect to the law is
the basis not merely of organized society, but
of rudimentary society When governments
and peoples are not ad djusted to this line of
from anarchy
despotism, and from despotism to anarchy,
without an hour of peace or an instant of
repose. (Cheers.) A celebrated naturalist
said that if man passed at one leap from the
pole to the tropics he would become mad.
Then how can people, who have passed
briskly from Bourbon tyranny to the liberty
of September pass from the liberty of Sep
iember to the late dictatorship? Do not de-
Ceive us with the puerile pride of hav--
ing good laws. Those laws should be full
filed. X Conservatives, progressists,
democrats, republicans-we all had
one universal base. Such felicity
had not happened in Spain for long
time; 1T had never been known before in the
constitutional epech That common base was
the respect to individual rights, engrossea
in the first chapter of the Contitution. We
had them grounded in our conscience; you
had formed them into laws, and the conser-
yative party had accepted them. Even the
very Bourbon party invoked them in their
misfortune, and invoked them when justice
was the more necessary-invoked them as
shield and protector - thus demonstrating
their reason and their universally. To save
this legality by observing it faithfully, ought
to be the conduct of the elected Of the revo-
luton of September. What was the unfor-
nate conduct of the Government From the
very first day, from the very first moment
now in sophistical circulars, now in reactionary
fhaxyl lafoo tod in1i iui1 a1,r,n n&e
The speeches from these benches have been
the perpetual commentary on their actions
/ am sorry to see the President of the
Council, General Prim, writing, for l could
have wished him to hear me- (Senor Sagasta-
''He is taking notes!'O The theory of the
Governments policy has been given to us in
the last sessions by the President of the
asked with SO much anxiety for the fate of
those who had been transported to the prison
of Carraca, his Excellency commenced by de-
vouring or forgetting one of the gravest
offenses they had committed. Article 81 of
The constitution says that even in the necessity
of publishing exceptional laws no citizen
should be taken more than $50 kilometres
from his own domicile. Nevertheless they
have transported citizens over 900 kilometres
from their donliciles. When we recollect,
gentlemen, that this ilegality has been COM
mitted not once but thousand times, if we
were to put the kilometrical Irregularities
of the Government, one upon the
other, we might arrive I don't say to the
moon, but possibly to the ancient dominions
of the King of Dahomey or the future aomi-
Mons of the Duke of Genoa cloud laugh
ter) wish, gentlemen, we were among a
free people like the English, where the re-
sponsibility of the Government and its agents
is not dead letter, but an effective reality.
/ wish we were in England. Those who have
been transported beyond the radius prescribed
by law could sue you at the tribunals, and
you would be condemned to indemnify them;
and as don't suppose ministers are so rich
as to be able to give thousand indemnities,
and as they have not abolished imprisonment
for debt, we should have the pleasure of see
ing all the ministers imprisoned by their
creditors, the republicans (Great laughter
This spectacle would indeed be grand and in
structiye. Have the Government
given account of the dissolutions at Cadz
Jerez, Malaga, and many other places
I don't stop to mention? The same arti
Gle prescribes their immediate .reorgani
Zation. Have you done this? A year
has passed and they are still
waiting reorganization! That is to say, for
whole year you have been breaking the law
You have carried your arbitrariness so fal
that you have dissolved militias who refused
to elect officers named by the Government
when by the law they have the right to elec
their own officers? What have you done will
the militia of Palencia? Tell me-would i
not have been better to have made law re
serving to yourselves, as in the French EN-
pire, the nomination of the militia chiefs
This wOuld have been n lepal arbitrarineSs