EMILIO CASTELAR ON " THE ENEMIES OF IRISH REFORM."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 17, 20 August 1886, Page 18

EMILIO CASTELAR ON " THE ENEMIES OF IRISH REFORM."

(From a Correspondent of the Nation.)

Salamanca, June, 1886. THB following is an article written by Don Emilio Castelar, published in La Illustracian Espanola y Americana of the 30th ult., and translated under all the difficulties which beßet an attempt to give an English version of the productions of the inimitable Spanish orator and statesman :—: — " Barely has the world witnessed a conflict so noisy and sublime as that going on at present between tbe imperial superstitions of grasping England and the undeniable rights of conquered Ireland. Thanks to holy and creative liberty, no smoke clouds darken the heaven, nor has one drop of blood fallen on that distracted land. Her battle ground is in Parliament. The trenches from whose heights the combatants vie with each other are the benches. The human voice, capable of overturning the walls of a proud Jericho, thunders forth as if descending from immensity, bearing in its tones the creative light which vivifies nations and the fulminating bolt that casts down idols. There are no armies equipped with aU kinds of arms, but legions of invisible ideas are felt rußhing to fierce battle, where the past appears with all its prestige on the one hand, and on the other the future with all its hopes. Among the discourses of so many celebrated orators, amid the turmoil of heaving and excited assemblies, behind tbe colouring of thoughts produced by a clear conscience on the one hand, and on the other the shades of sophisms expressed by darkest superstition, is seen to rise here the tower with its cells and its gallows ; the slave strung like vegetables to the earth and envying every animated species its liberty and its movement ; the conquest and the conqueror with all his exterminating forces ; whilst there stands a nation aspiring, after a series of progress obtained by its tenacity, to complete a right received from Nature herself, and lasting as Nature, although a hundred cruel victories of fortune and of force endeavoured to smother it. In this intellectual battle is repeated everything that passed in former batltes. First, the wounded privileges raise tumults capable of deafening the air ; and, second, the rights proclaimed have cast down the enemies of their proclamation and surety. Such will appear in all times the difference between ideas that tend to progress and those that resist it. These when seen at first sight seena stronger and more victorious, but recede because their own triumphs are wont to turn against them, demonstrating by the disturbing and fell consequences they bring the Government and the State the complete impossibility as well of their own being and life as of their progress and increase. British imperialism feels for its strong unity. The landlord, elated on the wiugsof fierce conquest during seven centuries and not yet recognised by the baffled chief of the ancient clans, defends his manor with a cruelty natural to all the depositaries of old and barbarous privileges. The two glorious classes of pride which are united in England— the pride of the Saxon who brought the jury, an individual security, and the pride of the Norman who brought monarchy and its attendant aristocracy— rise up fiercely against the Celt, whom they look upon of old as a subject of inferior race. Protestantism, in spite of its decay, arouses tbe eld dogmatic intolerance, and sows religious passions, veritable sources of horrible conflicts. But with all these elements of perdition and ruin collected against her, Ireland lives, asserts her rights, establishes the proper sovereignty, and aßks for institutions which without loosening the bonds which in time and space bind her to England may give her the government and direction of herself which all free nations have and deserve it. How much resistance to justice I The calumniators of all reforms cease not in their task of calumniating the reformer. A few days ago, commemorating the death of Disraeli, the late Tory chief, with crowns of primroses placed at the foot of his satue ia a square in London, among the scrolls written on several crowns the following was remarkable against Gladstone : " Death to the traitor of England." Traitor, because he endeavoured to moderate the reckless colonial ambition of his country, which might bring in its train an international league like that which overthrew Napoleon ; traitor, because he abrogated the ignominy of a Protestant Church placed like a yoke of infamy on the neck of a Catholic people, and heals the wounds opened by ancient feudalism with the sacred notions of modern right. Free nations will have their civic feasts', liberty its immortal epopeia, and romances, Bung by new troubadours who will arise as soon as time has fixed the emerald of poesy in our grand works ; then whilst the names of those now oppoied to the new idea

and resisting human piogrees must appear as a thick shade of dark night, those will shine forth who carry within themselves the fire and Bplendour of great ideals. But we may say that every redemption will find in the eternal human contingency its Judas or its Pilate. Let us continue the history of the resistance opposed to the freedom of Ireland . The Conservative party has the chief command in this warlike enterprise. Under the shadow of a great British Empire it tiies to hide the viper of a dominant privilege for its compeers, nobles, and magnates. In this great encounser of progress with reaction the real trumpeter, like those exterminating angels placed in sacred paintings of the final judgment, is an orator as garrulous and incendiary as Lord Churchill, who places at the service of the Conservative system the excesses copied from the most demagogical passions and the expressions current in the reddest clubs. That nothing may be wanting to this crusade, several ladies of the purest blood and of the noblest names, converted into ring-trotters, initate the model of Louise Michel, and vomit forth toads and snakes from tbeir rosy lips against the pacific revolution of Gladstone. To all these is joined the old Whig chief, Hartington, a scion of the purest Historic Toryism. Instead of the high considerations held towards iis chief formerly, as the first meetings of coalition remind us, he rises now with unfeigned insolence in the Commons and hurls forth i terrible provoking challenge and enters the perilous quicksands of in irreconcilable policy. We shall not say a word of the celebrated Gtoschen, a statist of great talent, but envious of Gladstone's genius, and anxious to fly on wings which Nature never bestowed on him, to ascend to heights whither alone fly with ease real geniuses. Similar is the proceeding of the Radical Chamberlain compromised by his ideas and by hishistory to the system applied to-day by his chief to Ireland, and floundering like an undisciplined soldier in front of the progressive hoßts of valour and intrepidity. Under pretext that Gladstone does not concede sufficient participation to the Irish in the Imperial chambers he becomes a deserter to right and liberty. . . . " The opinion of the organised parties and that of the old political elements are at one against Gladstone, but Gladstone has with him all the new factors brought by the electoral law into Parliamentary life. Tories, Whigs, Badicals, cannot understand how the work should be undone, accomplished by Pitt at the beginning of the century, the legislative union of the British archipelago. But the hardened methodist who presides over the English State, by his own merits and by the increased suffrage, knows that he requires a new spirit for the new society, and undertakes the solution of the social problem in England. The others calculate, intrigue, and battle, but he believes, and he alone conquers. You would not take him for a British politician, according to the opinion of an Oriental prophet. Like the Quakers, who with the band placed on the helm and the eyes fixed on heaven, after having crossed the ocean, traverse the desert with their taper and Bible, casting down the gigantic zela in the virgin woods and the fetish superstition of enslaved consciences to erect a societyjfree and progressing on the dogmas of the Gospel, this great man believes that he fulfils not only a political ministry but also a religious ministry in redeeming a nation, and freeing the earth from a disgraceful stain, and humanity from a great crime. There can be no doubt of it ; whilst the ancient political elements resist, the English people follow him as one under the magnetic influence follows the magnetiser in a kind of religious and prophetic dream. Thus the shallowest observer detects a most strange phenomenon which well deserves attentive observation and study. The old parties protest with one voice against the work of Gladstone ; while the masses, moved by his discourses, applaud his work and cooperate in it. His second, the marquiß par excellence, the magnate belonging to the Cavendish family, the celebrated Hartington, assembles his electors to communicate to them the aversion arising in his conscience and deep-rooted in his mind against the project ; and he finds not even the expected applause, but rather a courteous and unanimous disapproval. In a greater degree the same thing happens to Chamberlain. The caucus, a meeting of Radical and advanced committees, tolerates, but does not favour him. The public instinct foresees all that is about to happen Boon in this conflict, from what has passed in other analogous conflicts. " Catholic Emancipation, the Corn Laws, and the Franchise Bill compose the three most brilliant revolutions— at least pacific revolutions —in England in our century. Against the three the Conservative parties did not struggle. They attempted much more. Against the three they arose in a kind of moral insurrection as formidable as even material insurrections. When the Great Pitt, a title bestowed by the English on the Prime Minister of that name, proposed to Georee 111. Catholic Emancipation, the king believed that be proposed to him his dißgrace in the world and his condemnation to hell, on account of having taken the historic oath compromising him to favour the domination of the Protestant religion with the supremacy of its official Chnrch. And Pitt abandoned power, hurled from it by the general insurrection, although peaceful, which that project brought about. But Emancipation was effected at last by the vitality proper to progressive principles, by the dialectic series of human advancement, by the force of every just ideal, by the conqueßt of opinion, resisting premature or anticipated ideas, which perhaps in appearance are frustrated, but in the end are obtained, improving human societies, and placing a crown of glory on the brow of the propbets who announoe them, and on the statists who insisted on them in spite of the opportunity, until posterity, knowing and feeling the imperishable good of the profound and salutary reforms, pronounces its final verdict, which remains and lasts in the universal conscience and in human history. " Emilio Cabtklab."