History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

That no great political improvement, however plausible or attractive it may appear, can be productive of lasting benefit, unless it is preceded by a change in public opinion, and that every change of public opinion is preceded by changes in knowledge, are propositions which all history verifies, but which are particularly obvious in the history of Spain. The Spaniards have had everything except knowledge. They have had immense wealth, and fertile and well-peopled territories, in all parts of the globe. Their own country, washed by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and possessed of excellent harbours, is admirably situated for the purposes of trade between Europe and America, being so placed as to command the commerce of both hemispheres.1508 They had, at a very early period, ample municipal privileges; they had independent parliaments; they had the right of choosing their own magistrates, and managing their own cities. They have had rich and flourishing towns, abundant manufactures, and skilful artizans, whose choice productions could secure a ready sale in every market in the world. They have cultivated the fine arts with eminent success; their noble and exquisite paintings, and their magnificent churches, being justly ranked among the most wonderful efforts of the human hand. They speak a beautiful, sonorous, and flexible language, and their literature is not unworthy of their language. Their soil yields treasures of every kind. It overflows with wine and oil, and produces the choicest fruits in an almost tropical exuberance.1509 It contains the most valuable minerals, in a profuse variety unexampled in any other part of Europe. No where else do we find such rare and costly marbles, so easily accessible, and in such close communication with the sea, where they might safely be shipped, and sent to countries which require them.1510 As to the metals, there is hardly one which Spain does not possess in large quantities. Her mines of silver and of quicksilver are well known. She abounds in copper,1511 and her supply of lead is enormous.1512 Iron and coal, the two most useful of all the productions of the inorganic world,1513 are also abundant in that highly favoured country. Iron is said to exist in every part of Spain, and to be of the best quality;1514 while the coal-mines of Asturias are described as inexhaustible.1515 In short, nature has been so prodigal of her bounty, that it has been observed, with hardly an hyperbole, that the Spanish nation possesses within itself nearly every natural production which can satisfy either the necessity or the curiosity of mankind.1516

These are splendid gifts; it is for the historian to tell how they have been used. Certainly, the people who possess them have never been deficient in natural endowments. They have had their full share of great statesmen, great kings, great magistrates, and great legislators. They have had many able and vigorous rulers; and their history is ennobled by the frequent appearance of courageous and disinterested patriots, who have sacrificed their all, that they might help their country. The bravery of the people has never been disputed; while, as to the upper classes, the punctilious honour of a Spanish gentleman has passed into a bye-word, and circulated through the world. Of the nation generally, the best observers pronounce them to be high-minded, generous, truthful, full of integrity, warm and zealous friends, affectionate in all the private relations of life, frank, charitable, and humane.1517 Their sincerity in religious matters is unquestionable;1518 they are, moreover, eminently temperate and frugal.1519 Yet, all these great qualities have availed them nothing, and will avail them nothing, so long as they remain ignorant. What the end of all this will be, and whether in their unhappy country the right path will ever be taken, is impossible for any one to say.1520 But if it is not taken, no amelioration which can possibly be effected will penetrate below the surface. The sole course is, to weaken the superstition of the people; and this can only be done by that march of physical science, which, familiarizing men with conceptions of order and of regularity, gradually encroaches on the old notions of perturbation, of prodigy, and of miracle, and by this means accustoms the mind to explain the vicissitudes of affairs by natural considerations, instead of, as heretofore, by those which are purely supernatural.

To this, in the most advanced countries of Europe, every thing has been tending for nearly three centuries. But in Spain, unfortunately, education has always remained, and still remains, in the hands of the clergy, who steadily oppose that progress of knowledge, which they are well aware would be fatal to their own power.1521 The people, therefore, resting ignorant, and the causes which kept them in ignorance continuing, it avails the country nothing, that, from time to time, enlightened rulers have come forward, and liberal measures been adopted. The Spanish reformers have, with rare exceptions, eagerly attacked the Church, whose authority they clearly saw ought to be diminished. But what they did not see is, that such diminution can be of no real use unless it is the result of public opinion urging on politicians to the work. In Spain, politicians took the initiative, and the people lagged behind. Hence, in Spain, what was done at one time was sure to be undone at another. When the liberals were in power, they suppressed the Inquisition; but Ferdinand VII. easily restored it, because, though it had been destroyed by Spanish legislators, its existence was suited to the habits and traditions of the Spanish nation.1522 Fresh changes occurring, this odious tribunal was, in 1820, again abolished. Still, though its form is gone, its spirit lives.1523 The name, the body, and the visible appearance of the Inquisition, are no more; but the spirit which generated the Inquisition is enshrined in the hearts of the people, and, on slight provocation, would burst forth, and reinstate an institution which is the effect, far more than the cause, of the intolerant bigotry of the Spanish nation.

In the same way, other and more systematic attacks which were made on the Church, during the present century, succeeded at first, but were sure to be eventually baffled.1524 Under Joseph, in 1809, the monastic orders were suppressed, and their property was confiscated.1525 Little, however, did Spain gain by this. The nation was on their side;1526 and as soon as the storm passed away, they were restored. In 1836, there was another political movement, and the liberals being at the head of affairs, Mendizabal secularized all the Church property, and deprived the clergy of nearly the whole of their enormous and ill-gotten wealth.1527 He did not know how foolish it is to attack an institution, unless you can first lessen its influence. Overrating the power of legislation, he underrated the power of opinion. This, the result clearly showed. Within a very few years, the reaction began. In 1845, was enacted what was called the law of devolution, by which the first step was taken towards the re-endowment of the clergy.1528 In 1851, their position was still further improved by the celebrated Concordat, in which the right of acquiring, as well as of possessing, was solemnly confirmed to them.1529 With all this, the nation heartily concurred.1530 Such, however, was the madness of the liberal party, that, only four years afterwards, when they for a moment obtained power, they forcibly annulled these arrangements, and revoked concessions which had been made to the Church, and which, unhappily for Spain, public opinion had ratified.1531 The results might have been easily foreseen. In Aragon and in other parts of Spain, the people flew to arms; a Carlist insurrection broke out, and a cry ran through the country, that religion was in danger.1532 It is impossible to benefit such a nation as this. The reformers were, of course, overthrown, and by the autumn of 1856 their party was broken up. The political reaction now began, and advanced so rapidly, that, by the spring of 1857, the policy of the two preceding years was completely reversed. Those who idly thought that they could regenerate their country by laws, saw all their hopes confounded. A ministry was formed, whose measures were more in accordance with the national mind. In May 1857, Cortes assembled. The representatives of the people sanctioned the proceedings of the executive government, and, by their united authority, the worst provisions of the Concordat of 1851 were amply confirmed, the sale of Church property was forbidden, and all the limitations which had been set to the power of the bishops were at once removed.1533

The reader will now be able to understand the real nature of Spanish civilization. He will see how, under the high-sounding names of loyalty and religion, lurk the deadly evils which those names have always concealed, but which it is the business of the historian to drag to light and expose. A blind spirit of reverence, taking the form of an unworthy and ignominious submission to the Crown and the Church, is the capital and essential vice of the Spanish people. It is their sole national vice, and it has sufficed to ruin them. From it all nations have grievously suffered, and many still suffer. But nowhere in Europe, has this principle been so long supreme as in Spain. Therefore, nowhere else in Europe are the consequences so manifest and so fatal. The idea of liberty is extinct, if, indeed, in the true sense of the word, it ever can be said to have existed. Outbreaks, no doubt, there have been, and will be; but they are bursts of lawlessness, rather than of liberty. In the most civilized countries, the tendency always is, to obey even unjust laws, but while obeying them, to insist on their repeal. This is because we perceive that it is better to remove grievances than to resist them. While we submit to the particular hardship, we assail the system from which the hardship flows. For a nation to take this view, requires a certain reach of mind, which, in the darker periods of European history, was unattainable. Hence we find, that, in the middle ages, though tumults were incessant, rebellions were rare. But, since the sixteenth century, local insurrections, provoked by immediate injustice, are diminishing, and are being superseded by revolutions, which strike at once at the source from whence the injustice proceeds. There can be no doubt that this change is beneficial; partly because it is always good to rise from effects to causes, and partly because revolutions being less frequent than insurrections, the peace of society would be more rarely disturbed, if men confined themselves entirely to the larger remedy. At the same time, insurrections are generally wrong; revolutions are always right. An insurrection is too often the mad and passionate effort of ignorant persons, who are impatient under some immediate injury, and never stop to investigate its remote and general causes. But a revolution, when it is the work of the nation itself, is a splendid and imposing spectacle, because to the moral quality of indignation produced by the presence of evil, it adds the intellectual qualities of foresight and combination; and, uniting in the same act some of the highest properties of our nature, it achieves a double purpose, not only punishing the oppressor, but also relieving the oppressed.

In Spain, however, there never has been a revolution, properly so called; there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people, though often lawless, are never free. Among them, we find still preserved that peculiar taint of barbarism, which makes men prefer occasional disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our common nature, which even their slavish loyalty cannot eradicate, and which, from time to time, urge them to resist injustice. Such instincts are happily the inalienable lot of humanity, which we cannot forfeit, if we would, and which are too often the last resource against the extravagances of tyranny. And this is all that Spain now possesses. The Spaniards, therefore, resist, not because they are Spaniards, but because they are men. Still, even while they resist, they revere. While they will rise up against a vexatious impost, they crouch before a system, of which the impost is the smallest evil. They smite the tax-gatherer, but fall prostrate at the feet of the contemptible prince for whom the tax-gatherer plies his craft. They will even revile the troublesome and importunate monk, or sometimes they will scoff at the sleek and arrogant priest; while such is their infatuation, that they would risk their lives in defence of that cruel Church, which has inflicted on them hideous calamities, but to which they still cling, as if it were the dearest object of their affections.

Connected with these habits of mind, and in sooth forming part of them, we find a reverence for antiquity, and an inordinate tenacity of old opinions, old beliefs, and old habits, which remind us of those tropical civilizations which formerly flourished. Such prejudices were once universal even in Europe; but they began to die out in the sixteenth century, and are now, comparatively speaking, extinct, except in Spain, where they have always been welcomed. In that country, they retain their original force, and produce their natural results. By encouraging the notion, that all the truths most important to know are already known, they repress those aspirations, and dull that generous confidence in the future, without which nothing really great can be achieved. A people who regard the past with too wistful an eye, will never bestir themselves to help the onward progress; they will hardly believe that progress is possible. To them, antiquity is synonymous with wisdom, and every improvement is a dangerous innovation. In this state, Europe lingered for many centuries; in this state, Spain still lingers. Hence the Spaniards are remarkable for an inertness, a want of buoyancy, and an absence of hope, which, in our busy and enterprizing age, isolate them from the rest of the civilized world. Believing that little can be done, they are in no hurry to do it. Believing that the knowledge they have inherited, is far greater than any they can obtain, they wish to preserve their intellectual possessions whole and unimpaired; inasmuch as the least alteration in them might lessen their value. Content with what has been already bequeathed, they are excluded from that great European movement, which, first clearly perceptible in the sixteenth century, has ever since been steadily advancing, unsettling old opinions, destroying old follies, reforming and improving on every side, influencing even such barbarous countries as Russia and Turkey; but leaving Spain unscathed. While the human intellect has been making the most prodigious and unheard-of strides, while discoveries in every quarter are simultaneously pressing upon us, and coming in such rapid and bewildering succession, that the strongest sight, dazzled by the glare of their splendour, is unable to contemplate them as a whole; while other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen looming in the distance, whence they are now obscurely working on the advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy, feelings, which are the invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the veil is being rudely torn, and nature, violated at all points, is forced to disclose her secrets, and reveal her structure, her economy, and her laws, to the indomitable energy of man; while Europe is ringing with the noise of intellectual achievements, with which even despotic governments affect to sympathize, in order that they may divert them from their natural course, and use them as new instruments whereby to oppress yet more the liberties of the people; while, amidst this general din and excitement, the public mind, swayed to and fro, is tossed and agitated, – Spain sleeps on, untroubled, unheeding, impassive, receiving no impressions from the rest of the world, and making no impressions upon it. There she lies, at the further extremity of the Continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representative now remaining of the feelings and knowledge of the Middle Ages. And, what is the worst symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Though she is the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself to be the foremost. She is proud of every thing of which she should be ashamed. She is proud of the antiquity of her opinions; proud of her orthodoxy; proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil.

All these things conspiring together, produce, in their aggregate, that melancholy exhibition to which we give the collective name of Spain. The history of that single word is the history of nearly every vicissitude of which the human species is capable. It comprises the extremes of strength and of weakness, of unbounded wealth and of abject poverty. It is the history of the mixture of different races, languages, and bloods. It includes almost every political combination which the wit of man can devise; laws infinite in variety, as well as in number; constitutions of all kinds, from the most stringent to the most liberal. Democracy, monarchy, government by priests, government by municipalities, government by nobles, government by representative bodies, government by natives, government by foreigners, have been tried, and tried in vain. Material appliances have been lavishly used; arts, inventions, and machines introduced from abroad, manufactures set up, communications opened, roads made, canals dug, mines worked, harbours formed. In a word, there has been every sort of alteration, except alterations of opinion; there has been every possible change, except changes in knowledge. And the result is, that in spite of the efforts of successive governments, in spite of the influence of foreign customs, and in spite of those physical ameliorations, which just touch the surface of society, but are unable to penetrate beneath, there are no signs of national progress; the priests are rather gaining ground than losing it; the slightest attack on the Church rouses the people; while, even the dissoluteness of the clergy, and the odious vices which, in the present century, have stained the throne, can do naught to lessen either the superstition or the loyalty which the accumulated force of many centuries has graven on the minds, and eaten into the hearts of the Spanish nation.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME

1

The question as to whether the study of normal phenomena should or should not precede the study of abnormal ones, is of the greatest importance; and a neglect of it has introduced confusion into every work I have seen on general or comparative history. For this preliminary being unsettled, there has been no recognized principle of arrangement; and historians, instead of following a scientific method suited to the actual exigencies of our knowledge, have adopted an empirical method suited to their own exigencies; and have given priority to different countries, sometimes according to their size, sometimes according to their antiquity, sometimes according to their geographical position, sometimes according to their wealth, sometimes according to their religion, sometimes according to the brilliancy of their literature, and sometimes according to the facilities which the historian himself possessed for collecting materials. All these are factitious considerations; and, in a philosophic view, it is evident that precedence should be given to countries by the historian solely in reference to the ease with which their history can be generalized; following in this respect the scientific plan of proceeding from the simple to the complex. This leads us to the conclusion that, in the study of Man, as in the study of Nature, the question of priority resolves itself into a question of aberration; and that the more aberrant any people have been, that is to say, the more they have been interfered with, the lower they must be placed in an arrangement of the history of various countries. Coleridge (Lit. Remains, vol. i. p. 326, and elsewhere in his works) seems to suppose that the order should be the reverse of what I have stated, and that the laws both of mind and body can be generalized from pathological data. Without wishing to express myself too positively in opposition to so profound a thinker as Coleridge, I cannot help saying that this is contradicted by an immense amount of evidence, and, so far as I am aware, is supported by none. It is contradicted by the fact, that those branches of inquiry which deal with phenomena little affected by foreign causes, have been raised to sciences sooner than those which deal with phenomena greatly affected by foreign causes. The organic world, for example, is more perturbed by the inorganic world, than the inorganic world is perturbed by it. Hence we find that the inorganic sciences have always been cultivated before the organic ones, and at the present moment are far more advanced than they. In the same way, human physiology is older than human pathology; and while the physiology of the vegetable kingdom has been successfully prosecuted since the latter half of the seventeenth century, the pathology of the vegetable kingdom can scarcely be said to exist, since none of its laws have been generalized, and no systematic researches, on a large scale, have yet been made into the morbid anatomy of plants. It appears, therefore, that different ages and different sciences bear unconscious testimony to the uselessness of paying much attention to the abnormal, until considerable progress has been made in the study of the normal; and this conclusion might be confirmed by innumerable authorities, who, differing from Coleridge, hold that physiology is the basis of pathology, and that the laws of disease are to be raised, not from the phenomena presented in disease, but from those presented in health; in other words, that pathology should be investigated deductively rather than inductively, and that morbid anatomy and clinical observations may verify the conclusions of science, but can never supply the means of creating the science itself. On this extremely interesting question, compare Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Hist. des Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. ii. pp. 9, 10, 127; Bowman's Surgery, in Encyclop. of the Medical Sciences, p. 824; Bichat, Anatomie Générale, vol. i. p. 20; Cullen's Works, vol. i. p. 424; Comte, Philos. Positive, vol. iii. pp. 334, 335; Robin et Verdeil, Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. p. 68; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. p. 111; Georget, de la Folie, pp. 2, 391, 392; Brodie's Pathology and Surgery, p. 3; Blainville, Physiologie comparée, vol. i. p. 20; Feuchtersleben's Medical Psychology, p. 200; Lawrence's Lectures on Man, 1844, p. 45; Simon's Pathology, p. 5.

Another confirmation of the accuracy of this view is, that pathological investigations of the nervous system, numerous as they have been, have effected scarcely anything; the reason evidently being, that the preliminary knowledge of the normal state is not sufficiently advanced. See Noble on the Brain, pp. 76–92, 337, 338; Henry on the Nervous System, in Third Report of Brit. Assoc. p. 78; Holland's Medical Notes, p. 608; Jones and Sieveking's Patholog. Anat. p. 211.

2

A circumstance which Harris relates with evident delight, and goes out of his way to mention it. Lives of the Stuarts, vol. iii. p. 300. On the amount of loss the church thus sustained, see Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. i. pp. 181–184, and Eccleston's English Antiquities, p. 228.

3

The first divergence arose from the influence of the protective spirit, as I shall endeavour to explain in the next chapter.

4

On the obligations Europe is under to the Catholic clergy, see some liberal and very just remarks in Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. ii. pp. 374, 375; and in Guizot's Civilisation en France. See also Neander's Hist. of the Church, vol. iii. pp. 199–206, 255–257, vol. v. p. 138, vol. vi. pp. 406, 407; Palgrave's Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 655; Lingard's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 44; Klimrath, Travaux sur l'Hist. du droit, vol. i. p. 394; Carwithen's Hist. of the Church of England, vol. i. p. 157.