Augustus Adee to Hamilton Fish, October 13, 1876

No. 254. Mr. Adee to Mr. Fish.

Sir: I have not reported to you the progress of the religious question in Spain since my No. 277 was written, just a month ago, partly because the acrimonious discussion of the subject had become so belittled by the influences of party, prejudice, and personality as to lose much of its real and effective merit, and partly because it seemed probable that the whole matter would soon reach one of those halting-places, as it were, where a fair and comprehensive view of it could be obtained.

The press will have amply acquainted you with the pitifulness of the issues presented for debate, such as whether a school-mistress in Minorca had been rebuked for walking in public with several little girls of Protestant families; whether a peddler in Valladolid had been hindered from crying Bibles for sale in the public streets; whether the subgovernor of Minorca had entered a room habitually used for dissident worship, or only a school-room used occasionally for such worship; and whether the offending sign-boards in Madrid had been partly blotted out by the authorities with or without the consent of the pastors. Several marked art cles which appeared in the foreign press, and in which these pettinesses were somewhat sharply commented upon, produced the natural and perhaps not over-beneficial result of merely irritating the sensibilities of the public and the government.

Finally, the representatives in England of the religious works established here under English contro petitioned the secretary of state for foreign affairs to exert influence with the government of Spain to the result of being advised by Lord Derby to procure the opinion of a competent Spanish lawyer as to the true meaning of the eleventh article of the new constitution, on which the dispute really turned.

This charge was intrusted to the agent in Madrid of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Rev. Mr. Corfield. This gentleman had the best legal right of complaint of any of the foreign propagandists, inas much as he keeps a shop for the sale of Bibles, and pays the regular trades-tax (contribution industrial) for the privilege of carrying on his trade, notwithstanding which his sign-board, which simply said “Depositary of the Holy Scriptures,” was one of the first to be expunged, to the grave prejudice, as Mr. Corfield maintained, of his lawfully-licensed business. Mr. Corfield with much sagacity selected, for the purpose of consultation, Don Manuel Alonso Martinez, a jurist of high repute, formerly minister of grace and justice in 1874 under General Serrano, and one of the commission of notables charged with preparing the draft of the present constitution.

The interrogatories propounded to him were: Whether a duly-licensed vender has a right to announce by sign-boards the objects he is authorized to sell; whether itinerant venders have the right to cry the wares they are licensed to sell, (in this case Bibles;) whether, the inviolability of places of worship being proclaimed, it is lawful to denote their object, when non-Catholic, by means of undenominational inscriptions, such, for instance, as this, “Church of Christ;” and, lastly, by what right, basing its action on the words “public manifestations,” employed in the eleventh article, has the government prohibited sign-boards referring to dissident worship or propaganda, and forbidden the public crying of Bibles in the streets?

To these inquiries, or rather to the general spirit of them, Mr. Alonso Martinez has replied in a well-written opinion, in which the eleventh article of the constitution is analyzed with much detail. A translation of this opinion is hereto appended for your information.

You will observe that, with respect to inscriptions denoting a place of worship, Mr. Alonso Martinez is of opinion that, while they are logically admissible, yet no one can rightly accuse the government of a constitutional infringement in prohibiting them; and that, in so far as concerns the trade in Bibles, he relegates the whole matter to the law for the regulation of the press, yet to be drawn up in conformity with the thirteenth article of the constitution.

I do not know that it is in place for me to follow or comment upon the reasoning of Mr. Alonso Martinez in his analysis of the letter and interpretation of the spirit of the much-disputed eleventh article. He had a large share in drafting it, if indeed it was not, as is said, due to his own pen, and therefore no one is more fit than he to elucidate its obscurities. On the one hand, the explanations given in the Senate and Congreso by the adherents of the government, and the bitter opposition of the ultramontane party to its “mistaken” and “un-Catholic” liberalism, as they said, would seem to invest the controverted article with all the tolerance and liberty claimed for it in some quarters. And, on the other hand, adopting Mr. Alonso Martinez’s proposition as to the necessary elasticity of constitutional precepts in order to allow of extreme political parties governing within their limits, it seems equally clear that the letter of the article is capable of a far more restricted construction than that which is placed upon it by the government presided over by Mr. Canovas del Castillo.

It is not to be forgotten, in looking at these points, that the phrase “ceremonias ni manifestaciones públicas,” accordiug to the authoritative dictum of Mr. Alonso Martinez, has a more extended scope than was generally thought, in that the adjective públicas is used by him only to qualify manifestaciones, leaving ceremonias to stand alone and unqualified; that is, to turn the idea into English, the sense is not of the prohibition of public ceremonies and manifestations, but of ceremonies or public manifestations. And it may be that, in some future party change in Spain, room may be found for discussion as to the precise line of demarkation between the exercise of the culto, (or simply adoration, reverence, worshipful homage,) which is allowed, and the practice, of ceremonies, which is prohibited.

It is probable, however, that those who anticipate word-quibbles of this character do but borrow needless trouble, and that the larger views will prevail, and continue to prevail, which grant practical inviolability to dissenting temples and cemeteries, and which admit of the propaganda of opinions and religious belief, within proper limits, to be fixed by special laws.

I have, &c.,