POLITICS IN SPAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 253, 23 October 1909, Page 4

POLITICS IN SPAIN.

By a very natural sequence of evente, the Spanish Ministry has been, defeated and driven, from office. In Spain, as in most European countries, there is a nominal distinction between two great political parties, Liberal and Conservative; and for some years past the Conservatives Jia.ve held power. But it must not be supposed that the people of Spain axe as a body inclined toward the maintenance of the old order of things, or the support of the privileged classes. Liberalism has made rapid headway in Spain during the past halfcentury, aaid more especially since the terrible "debacle" of the SpanishAmerican War. But it has been practically impossible for the Liberals to assert themselves as a political element, or to secure control of the administration. The chief difficulty has been that the disunion among the Liberals themselves and the wide range of opinions they profess, varying from! Social Democracy to Anarchism pure and simple, have prevented them from opposing anything like a united front to the reactionary forces. Then they have arrayed against them all the gigantic power of the Church; and the people, who are, in the mass, the most j illiterate and ignorant of all European nations, have been so far disillusioned by I the corruption and dishonesty that has long prevailed, irrespective of party, in official circles that they have almost ceased to hope or to interest themselves in political reforms. What was needed to consolidate the Liberals was some pretext on which they could appeal to the patriotic spirit in which the Spaniards have never been found wanting, and some occasion that would enable them to depict in lurid colours the tyranny and brutality of the "old regime." They have found the first in the failure of the Riff campaign, the second in the execution of Ferrer. In denouncing the ferocity displayed by the Government toward Ferrer, the Spanish Liberals knew that they had the sympathy of the civilised world behind them; and the. mismanagement of the war in Morocco is at least a reasonable excuse for the nation to try a change of administration. The new Government thus enters on its tenure of office under tolerably favourable auspices; and the chronicles of the future may yet record that the execution of Ferrer was the turning point in the history oi Spain, and that it inaugurated for his country a new era of higher political aims, greater freedom, and wider and deeper civilisation.