Kingdom of Spain

“ But let us indulge a dream of idle speculation, and suppose that we are to engage with Spain, and with Spain alone; it is not even yet very certain that much advantage will be gained. Spain is not easily vulnerable; her kingdom, by the loss or cession of many fragments of dominion, is become solid and compact. The Spaniards have indeed no fleet able to oppose us, but they will not endeavour actual opposition; they will shut themselves up in their own territories, and let us exhaust our seamen in a hopeless siege. ”

“ and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity, or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. ”

“ Several of the Spanish statesmen of the last Century were very superior men, the kingdom itself was strong, and the Indies did not experience any disturbances calculated seriously to embarrass the mother-country. Then the close union that was brought about between France and Spain, in the early days of Charles III. and the last days of Louis XV., had no unimportant effect on the fortunes of Spain. ”

“ Thus in England as in France, though by widely differing chances, the kingly power had triumphed over feudalism. Monarchs began to come into direct contact, not always pleasant, with the entire mass of their subjects, the "third estate," the common people.
RISE OF SPANISH POWER Spain also was to pass through a similar experience. Indeed, one of the most striking facts of this age of the Renaissance is the swift and spectacular rise of Spain from a land of feebleness and internal strife into the most powerful kingdom of Europe. ”

“ For several centuries, however, they had prospered in Spain, and there they had developed learning and the arts with splendid success, at a moment when Christian Europe was still plunged in darkness. But presently the feudal principalities lodged in the Pyrenees and Asturian mountains began to gain ground, and finally toward the end of the fifteenth century these states came together in a united monarchy that conquered the last Arab kingdom and founded modern Spain. ”

“ They selected Spain as an excellent field of enterprise; and it must be said that all the governments of the regency showed so much indulgence towards the Catholic revival thus started, that in less than a decade the kingdom was studded with more convents, monasteries, Jesuit colleges, Catholic schools, and foundations than had existed in the palmy days of the houses of Austria and Bourbon in the 17th and 18th centuries. ”

“ SPAIN (España) , a kingdom in the extreme south-west of Europe, comprising about eleven-thirteenths of the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, and the fortified station of Ceuta, on the Moroccan coast opposite to Gibraltar. Each of the two island groups forms one of the forty-nine provinces of the kingdom, although only the first named belongs geographically to Spain. ”

“ Wherefore, being persuaded that the King of Spain, our grandson, will always preserve for us, for our House, for the kingdom wherein he is born, the same tenderness, and the same sentiments whereof he has given us so many proofs, that his example, uniting his new subjects to ours, is going to form a perpetual amity, and the most perfect correspondence between them ”

“ Two centuries of comparative peace had broadened and strengthened the Moorish kingdom until it embraced a portion of south-eastern Spain estimated as containing more than eleven thousand square miles, with a population of three millions, including one hundred thousand valiant men of war. The natural resources of the country were enhanced by irrigation, at which the Orientals are so expert, canals and aqueducts supplied the cities and plains with water, and trade with Africa, and with the Christians of Spain, brought great wealth into the kingdom. ”

“ Roman empire a province where the people were more industrious or more prosperous. How strongly this account contrasts with the history of modern Spain! When the Spanish monarchs were aspiring to rule the world, in the sixteenth century, the streets of their cities were overrun with beggars. Only a century ago, the number of people in Spain who were without shirts, because they were too poor to buy such a luxury, was estimated at three millions, or one-third of the population of the kingdom. ”

“ Let your Majesty hold as the most important affair of your State to make yourself King of Spain. I mean, Sire, that you should not content yourself with being King of Portugal, of Aragon, of Valencia, Count of Barcelona, but that you should strive and consider with mature and secret counsel to reduce these realms of which Spain consists to the laws and form of Castile, without any distinction. If your Majesty succeeds in this, you will be the most powerful Prince in the world. ”

“ NO modern European nation has endured such vicissitudes of good and evil fortune as the Spanish. From the virtual anarchy of the Castilian kingdoms under Juan II and Enrique IV, the resolute wills of Ferdinand and Isabella evoked order and, by the union with Aragon, the conquest of Granada, Naples and Navarre and the acquisition of the New World, they left Spain in a most commanding position. ”

“ The Spaniards have been so busy keeping the East out of the West, fighting the battles of other nations, keeping those wretched Bourbons on the thrones of Italy where they were not wanted, opening up the New World and making Spanish America, that they have neglected Spain. ”

“ And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. ”

“ For every line we cross, and every city and province we visit, is rich in association, even if the land is now but a great sepulchre of great peoples.
And we were in Spain. On the northern frontier, and in instant contact with the people of France, is a race that is Spanish only in name, and hardly that; a race that has, through all the mutations of government in this unstable country, maintained a sort of independence, with rights and privileges, manners and customs so peculiar to themselves, that they may be said to be in Spain, but not of Spain. ”

“ She has more than her will and the weapon of her body. She has ideas for weapons. The modern State functioning under an almighty monarch, the medieval Church with its source in Rome and Christ, and for her people Justice: this is the triune tool whereby to weld the anarchies of Spain into her Spain at last. ”

“ If the Spaniards, when they first took possession of the newly discovered world, instead of destroying the inhabitants by thousands, had either had the urbanity or the policy to have conciliated them by kind treatment, and to have united them, gradually, to their own people, such an accession might have been made to the power of the king of Spain, as would have made him far the greatest monarch that ever yet ruled in the globe ”

“ It appears, therefore, that the empire was more a matter of show than of strength, and that Spain, who already had a surfeit of responsibility, what with her conquests in Italy, Africa, and the Americas, must bear the burden for all. The reign of Charles would seem to be the parting of the ways for Spain. If she could have restricted herself to her purely Spanish inheritance, even with the incubus of her Italian possessions, she might have prolonged her existence as a great power indefinitely. ”

“ In this state of things, I think of you for the throne of Spain. You will be the sovereign of a generous nation, of 11,000,000 of men, and of important colonies. With economy and activity, Spain could have 60,000 men under arms and fifty vessels in her ports. ”

“ I will venture to add that this union and the sight of my happiness will exercise a beneficial effect on the destiny of all Spain, and will rob a blind and furious people of the pretext of covering a country with blood in the name of a Prince, the eldest son of an ancient dynasty, who has, by a solemn treaty by his own choice and by the most glorious of all adoptions, made himself a French Prince and a son of Your Imperial Majesty. ”

“ My country has been rent for years by the devotion of our people whose sympathies have been divided between Don Carlos and myself. Please God I may be able to unite them for the future welfare of Spain. My first act as King of Spain will be to offer a complete amnesty to all and one who cease their enmity to myself and my Government and are willing to assist me in establishing law and order and ensuring the happiness and prosperity of my countrymen, of our glorious Spain. ”

“ No, to be great Spain does not have to be a tyrant, Spain is sufficient unto herself, Spain was greater when she had only her own territory, wrested from the clutches of the Moor. I too am a Spaniard, but before being a Spaniard I am a man, and before Spain and above Spain is her honor, the lofty principles of morality, the eternal principles of immutable justice! ”

“ But the king's grandson, young Prince Juan Carlos, is taking special studies so he will be ready to be king when he is old enough. And of course there are still people who would like to see Spain become a democratic republic, like the United States, and not have a king at all. ”

“ How strangely Spain had fallen from its high estate in Europe the wars of Lewis had abundantly shown, but so vast was the extent of its empire, so enormous the resources which still remained to it, that under a vigorous ruler men believed its old power would at once return. Its sovereign was still master of some of the noblest provinces of the Old World and the New, of Spain itself, of the Milanese, of Naples and Sicily, of the Netherlands, of Southern America, of the noble islands of the Spanish Main. ”

“ Spain stood out as one of the greatest states in Europe. With her close approximation to a united nationality, her all-powerful monarchy, her highly elaborate bureaucracy, her increasing body of law, soon to be codified into a great whole, her nascent literature, her military gifts and resources, the wealth and romance of the Indies, she stood on the threshold of the sixteenth century with imposing power and dignity. ”

“ Colonial governments are of necessity adaptations of familiar domestic institutions to new functions. The government of Spain in the sixteenth century was not that of a modern centralized monarchy but rather of a group of kingdoms only partially welded together by the possession of the same sovereign, the same language, and the same religion. The King of Spain was also the ruler of other kingdoms outside of the peninsula. ”

“ THE CAUSES OF SPAIN'S DECADENCE. The golden age of Spain began in 1492, in which year the conquest of Granada extinguished the Arab dominion, and the discovery of America by Columbus opened a new world to the enterprise of the Spanish cavaliers. It continued during the reigns of Charles I. and Philip II., extending over a period of about a century, during which Spain was the leading power in Europe, and occupied the foremost position in the civilized world. ”

“ The country to which we should sacrifice our lives in heroic arms, and which we ought to esteem superior to all our private interests, and as the creditor of all our possible obsequies and services, is that body of state, under which we are united in one civil government, and protected by, and bound to the observance of the same laws. Thus Spain is the proper object of the love of a Spaniard, France of a Frenchman, and Poland of a Polander. ”

“ There has never been in Spain the bitter separation of nobles and people; together they both worked for their freedom, keeping a fraternal relationship that is uncommon in history. The Spanish temperament, like the English, has an intense loyalty and love of tradition; it finds its happiest condition under a monarchy, but the history of the 19th century shows it must be a constitutional monarchy; a modern king rules for the good of the people since he rules by will of the people. ”

“ That the force of Spain alone, sir, is much to be dreaded, no man will assert; for that empire, it is well known, has long been seized with all the symptoms of declining power, and has been supported, not by its own strength, but by the interests of its neighbours. The vast dominions of the Spaniards are only an empty show; they are lands without inhabitants, and, by consequence, without defence ”

“ One reason why we feel so deep an interest in the fate of the Castilian power, is that the history of Spain is so closely interwoven with that of our own country,—discovered and colonized as it was under the auspices of the Spanish government. We owe our very existence to Spain, and from the close of the fifteenth century our histories have run on in parallel lines. ”