Canada. The bona fide concession to Cuba of a status parallel to that which Canada now enjoys would be followed by the withdrawal of the Spanish army and the neutralization of the island. It has been shown in the early part of this paper that the Confederation Act makes the Canadians practically free and independent. Are Canadians subject to the authority and government of any other nation? The same constitutional document implicitly negatives it. Canadians are not less "independent" because a common Crown joins them in perpetual amity with other peoples, of whose Parliaments our Queen is also the head, the whole together constituting a vast and free Empire. Alliance is not dependence, nor does union imply subjection. Citizens of an American state are also part of a larger union under a President who governs. Are the citizens of the several states of the Union not free and independent? It will be difficult to convince Canadians that American citizens are free and independent in any sense in which citizens of the Dominion of Canada are not also free and independent. The form of monarchy is nothing. Canadians are not less free because the head of our Executive and Legislature dates her title back to an election in 1688, instead of to a date four years or less ago; nor because the succession is provided for otherwise than by a quadrennial revolution, not without its passions, its perils, and sometimes its corruptions. The Cuban people may also be free and independent under a true national autonomic constitution, such as governs the relations of Canada to the Empire, with which as a whole she is united, but to no part of which she is subject. Under such a constitution Spain would not possess or rule Cuba, though the Queen of Spain would continue to be Queen of Cuba. The declaration of the United States Congress in respect to the Cubans does not therefore literally involve any greater consequences than this; that the United States insists that the autonomic constitution granted to the island shall be so amended, and the letter so interpreted and applied, as to reproduce the spirit and practice which the British Constitution imports into the similar statutory Constitution of Canada. The withdrawal of the Spanish army is a reasonable condition, inasmuch as its presence would reduce the concession to a mere pretence. Neutralization of the island for military purposes might follow. Would not the adoption of this interpretation of its own declaration, by the United States Government, throw upon the Government of Spain the guilt of a premature and unnecessary declaration of war? May it not open the door to a settlement which will relieve both nations of many difficulties? Last, but surely not least, may it not accord best with the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants of Cuba ? If the Queen of Spain is left to be nominal sovereign of the neutralized island, even Spanish pride need suffer no real blow, and Spain would be a gainer by her seeming loss. This result ought not to be distasteful to the feelings of the conquerors. They have nothing to gain by adding internal disaster to military defeat. The ill-cemented constitutional structure of Spanish Government, built on modern and liberal ideals, would hardly survive an exasperating national humiliation. Moderation on the part of the United States, refraining from breaking the bruised reed, might earn the ultimate gratitude, in place of the perpetual hatred, of this historic, if long misguided and unfortunate people. The glory and mission of the English nations (of which no small share belongs to the United States), is in the success of the great principle of government by the people. Through that channel has flowed the enlarging flood of economic improvement and economic justice, to which the world already owes so much and from which it has more to hope. Political pride and economic wisdom alike rejoice at the triumph of these ideas in every nation. Nothing would so much retard the advance, which Spain has been attempting in this direction, as a disastrous humiliation, plunging the nation back into the utter ruin of revolution and anarchy. The first great need of Spain is solid national unity around a settled constitutional Government. For more than a century the unhappy country has been a prey to divisions and disorders, ruinous to its prosperity, demoralizing to Government and people. Torn by successive revolts and revolutions, it has been by turns a kingdom, a republic and an anarchy. The throne has continued to be the prize of rival pretenders, long after all other European countries had settled this first principle of the national establishment. While the central sun is subject to continual mutations, disorder must be the law of the system. To too many Spanish minds kingship appears to be still mantled with ideas brought from the Middle Ages. They attribute to it disproportionate sacredness and importance. The throne is still treated as an inheritance of right and the coveted seat of power. The schemes of the Carlists recall us to the Wars of the Roses. It seems to be hard for the Latin nations, notwithstanding that all are endeavouring to imitate the British Constitution, to grasp the conception of the Crown as simply a high office of trust, existing, in common with every other office of the State, at the will as well as for the benefit of the people, and subject to a trustee's responsibility to them. With their mental and legal training the Latin nations may be pardoned if they are slow to appreciate that unwritten but fundamental principle of the British Constitution. English lawyers of the old school long found it impossible to grasp the principles of equity which reversed much of the common law. British constitutional practice likewise has converted the simple lines of the Constitution to meanings precisely opposite to the forms. Even our own Sir Wilfred Laurier, a recent but loyal convert to Imperial union, has betrayed by his language on several occasions his incomplete grasp of the same principles, which, on a larger scale, are the key to our Imperial constitutional system. If there is left in royal pretenders or advocates of republicanism any vestige of the pure and ancient blood of Spanish patriotism, they will recognize that now is the time to drop, not only once but forever, the dagger of revolution, constantly aimed for selfish purposes at the throat of their country. At one moment, in the presence of her misfortunes and her necessity, Don Carlos on the one side, and the Republican leaders on the other, announced their honourable decision to refrain from widening the wounds of their country in the moment of her agony. It may be that their self-abnegation only leaves room for the irreconcilable violence of anarchism and for the more sinister intrusion of the military adventurer. The perpetual surrender of doctrinaire theories and personal ambitions would be the best sacrifice that Spaniards could lay upon the altar of patriotism. The scene, when the Queen Regent led the young Sovereign into the presence of the Cortes and threw the throne and nation upon the protection of their united loyalty, will take its place among the touching pictures of history. One would think that every remnant of ancient Spanish chivalry would have responded. to that stirring and pathetic appeal. It moves even English blood by its resemblance to the strangely parallel incident in our own history. Under like circumstances of distress and disunion, Elizabeth at Tilbury summoned a divided people to rally for England's sake to her support. We remember how Catholic and Puritan, in the presence of the nation's danger, responded to the appeal, abandoning their plots and forgetting their grievances. In that stern hour, when the Spanish terror threatened to overwhelm the rising nation, Elizabeth became for the first time truly Queen of England. The mighty flood rolled away harmlessly, leaving deep and forever consolidated the foundations of English national unity. Spain is not England. English nion has sprung and strengthened from the root of liberty in religious thought and political action, the very root which Spain, in the same period, was only too successfully extirpating from her soil. This bitter hour might bring home to Spaniards the words which the sublime genius of Schiller put into the mouth of King Philip II.: "The world is still, for one short evening, mine, The prophecy has worked its full accomplishment. After ten generations of self-wrought decay, Spain is reduced to vital extremity by the descendants of the conquerors of the Armada. Is it vain to hope that at last external pressure may produce consolidating effects upon her restless and disunited people? If her sovereign's appeal is responded to by her subjects, as Englishmen responded to Elizabeth at Tilbury, thanksgiving will arise not only among the friends of Spain but from every true believer in the cause of constitutional Government and every lover of the happiness and progress of nations. Such results might well reconcile Spain to the sufferings she must undergo and incline her well-wishers to forgive any technical wrong that may have been done her by the institution and in the course of the war. There is an apparent harshness in the fate which tears from the lingering grasp of Spain her last possession in that New World which her adventurous discoverers first made known. It may seem more cruel yet to find the young nation which Spain helped to nurse into independent existence wielding the severing sword. The righteousness of the sentence is not to be judged by the virtue of the executioner. There is a justice which cries up from the ground. By the sword Spain loses that which she had won by a still more ruthless sword. Spaniards wrestle with the sons of Spaniards over a soil once cruelly drenched with the blood and sweat of its primitive possessors. It is true that within this century Spain has made great advances. She has become tolerant and constitutional. She had learned the necessity of applying a liberal system to her remaining American colonies. It is upon those who are displaying this new and liberal spirit that the long accumulating wrath has fallen. But so has it always been meted, since upon the Jews of the first century, Christian and Pharisee alike, fell the blood of all the prophets. The mild Louis the Sixteenth paid the iniquities of all the Louis. Liberal England was left to sign the bitter bond that recorded the severance, wrought by the folly of the last English king who aimed at being an absolutist. It is in the nature of things that great popular movements of opinion should produce their effects. often too late; after judgment, once just, has been transmuted, by the progress of events, into untimely prejudice. The wave that rises slowly under the wind, works destruction on distant shores long after the originating impulse has subsided. The loss of Spain's last colony may prove to be a kindness cruelly dealt. It was an ill-fated gift which the genius of Christopher Columbus, the enterprise of her mariners, and the skill of her soldiers brought to their nation. The mastery of the Indies set her upon a false course. It introduced into her bosom the taint of avarice and nourished in prince and people the lust of oppression. The possession of a colonial empire kept alive the worst influences in Spanish government. Where a carcase is the eagles will gather. Colonial offices offer prizes to self-seeking adventurers, who perturb government at home with the prospect of being quieted with lucrative opportunities at a safe distance. Freedom of speech-of the press, of Parliament is the only defence against the corrupt use of the power by the agents of power, particularly in distant possessions. Corruption is a jackal that feeds at the heels of oppression. Sooner or later the jackal gnaws the sinews of the lion. Far gone is the condition of a nation when from that infection even the military profession is not free. It has been alleged that the corruption of Spanish generals, profiting perhaps by falsified pay rolls, will be found to account for the extraordinary prolongation of the Cuban war of rebellion. As the result of the war the Colonial Empire comes to an end. The lusts that it fed, the corruptions that it engendered, perish with it. |