The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-05

had a chance. Io-uay he has not a hope. The Spaniard as he was Is not, and the world will never see him more. A thoughtful German who has lived for years in Spain declared that the old cavalier with his haughtlness and his honesty his pride and his honor, his punctilious ceremoniousness but his es- sential gentlemanliness has gone for eVer And if Spain is to have nation al and social resurrection the masses, not the classes, must be looked to, The hope of the future lies with the 'gente baja." that is, the yeomanry and the peasantry.
 It is sadly true that at this hour these masses are fearfully, distressing ly ignorant. No power has done any thing effective to save them from sink ing lower and lower into the slough of a semi mi-animalstupidity, Of course they are poor. What other result could years of merciless taxation, pressing chiefly on them, yield? Of course they are superstitious. What full beam of light has ever been poured around them? Of course they are now often passionate and stealthy. What other than this fell fruit would you look for from the wretched culture which has been their only care? Of course they are lazy. But what openings have they had? What incentive to toll?
 But when all this disparagement has been set forth, it remains true accord ing to the firm belief of score of com potent witnesses, that the peasant, the small farmer, the workingman, is the hope of this degraded land. And he is the coming revolutionary. The air is heavy with the brewing storms. The tempest may burst in an hour. Sleep ing in these poor peasants, who have never had fair show in the face of Europe, are great qualities. These men, now scoffed at as soldiers because, undrilled, unfed, unled, they have had to go from bitter defeat to defeat, can yet prove themselves worthy of the praise of Napoleon and Wellington as the raw material out of which might be made the toughest infantry in the world.
 These masses are strangely patient and enduring" "sufrida," to use their own pregnant word. They have great pluck and heroism. They are cheerful, grateful, affectionate and hospitable. But they have been ground down till the good is buried out of sight. The evil has been called out The nobes have racked and spoiled them. The government has known them only as patient beasts of burden on whom must be laid the multiplied and oppres- sive loads of petty taxes, till they are verify crushed beneath the pitiless weight. For this oppression, this ex- tortion, the peasant gets nothing. The bad roads grow worse and the appro- priated road tax fills the pocket of some official. The fallen bridges are not repaired, but some engineer is ben efited. The children are left without school or teacher, yet school tax is lev jed. The beardless lads are hurried off to Cuba or some other colony end di soon, but their pay Is drawn by the of ficer. The navy is made up of many phantom ships, and yet the taxes are collected for the naval bureau. A well informed friend stated that the popu- lation of Spain was somewhere about seventeen million; that of these eight million could not write that six million could neither read nor write, and that about half of the whole had no sure and paying occupation. Here is, indeed, a submerged half and over this sub merged half rulesa rapacious bureau cracy incompetent and regardless of the obligation flowing from palce and power and trust. How long can this misrule last?-The Rev. Dr. J. S. Mac intosh in the Philadelphia Ledger.