JOSÉ CRISTOBAL SORNI , Minister of the Colonies to the electors of the nation, May 3, 1870

The executive power of the Spanish republic to the electors of the nation.

[From La Graceta de Madrid, May 3, 1873.]

Any general electoral period is necessarily of great importance, since, in such a struggle, ideas are developed into laws, and the citizens of a state pronounce their judgment on its public powers. But, when the creation and not the criticism of a public power is involved; when radical innovations and not slow and steady progress are to be decided; when it is intended to change the form of the government itself from a fabric based upon privilege to one based upon right, the importance of an electoral period extends beyond the present time and influences all future time and all future generations.

The executive power would deem itself unworthy of its high mission and of the confidence bestowed upon it by the nation, if it did not now urge upon the electors the gravity of the issue in deciding the fate of the commonwealth, so grave, indeed, that if unreasoning counsels prevail the result maybe an act of national suicide. In truth a national suicide, for, in full self-command, free in the expression of its ideas, free in the emission of its vote, without any kind of administrative or political pressure, without menace or constraint from any person whatever, if right, and, in fact, the sovereign arbitrator of its own lot, the Spanish nation, if it falls, can blame naught save its own incapacity laid bare before the world to-day and passing down to history without excuse or justification.

The admirable prudence of this nation, the proofs of wisdom shown in its passage from monarchy to democracy in 1868, and in its present completion of democracy in a republic, are a sure pledge that in the coming untrammeled electoral period, it will show the same calmness and judgment it has heretofore shown in eras of revolution. It pertains to the executive to assure the freedom of the ballot, in order that the result of the elections may be not merely legitimate, but also a genuine moral expression of the popular will.

To coerce the will of the people is, at all times, a crime; but it is more than a crime, it is madness, for a republican government to do so. The word “republic,” in its simplest sense, means the government of nations by themselves, and self-government springs from the ballot-box. To corrupt, vitiate, or falsify elections is the same as to corrupt, vitiate, or falsify the republic itself. From the moment the principle of popular sovereignty forms a practical element in our institutions—from the moment when all ideas have full liberty of expression by speech and pen, in order that, through universal suffrage, they may develop into laws, the rulers of the nation are limited to leaving the free expression of these ideas to the will of the people, assuring them full freedom and the good order indispensable to freedom of action.

The republican government is resolved to fulfill this duty, and trusts that all parties and all citizens will second it in this course, for otherwise we would but show that we are unfitted for self-government, and, if we showed this, we would also demonstrate the impossibility of the republic, and the judgment of the world would class us among the peoples whose liberty is irredeemably lost.

Even did morality and policy not counsel the government to the fullest electoral freedom, it would be counseled by the most rudimentary instinct of self-preservation.

This government is charged with guaranteeing against all attacks the sincerity of the vote which consecrates the republic in our country and organizes it upon bases as far removed from reaction as from utopianism. The day on which the National Assembly proclaimed the republic the assembly expressly covenanted to call upon the people to organize its work, and to perfect the chain of consequences flowing from the principle then proclaimed. According to the practice of all free nations, and according to the language of the laws themselves, when sovereignty resides with the people, to them it now belongs to define and extend without delay the decision of the assembly. Public opinion in Europe has recognized the need of a speedy appeal to the Spanish people in solemn convocation.

The assembly passed a law irrevocably fixing the time for such convocation, and therefore the government took action with a strong hand and a firm resolve against those who sought to retard the verdict of the nation and to convoke illegally the suspended assembly, ignoring alike the language of the constitution, the letter of the laws, and the sovereignty of the people. And the same energy it showed against those who in high places conspired to prevent the elections, will it also show against those who from below seek to disturb the elections and to set aside their sovereign verdict.

On its accession to the heights of power the government saw that the very roots of constitutional rule were withered in Spain by the falsification and corruption of the ballot. Councils of ministers designated their candidates as though they appointed office-holders; governors received their countersign and transmitted it to their underlings; the sacred mission of justice was converted into an electioneering agency; the budget became a means of bribery; the public administration became a weapon of attack, and the conduct of our elections reached so scandalous a height, and the art of electoral corruption became so deeply rooted, that these same notorious falsifiers of the ballot have themselves shrunk back, terrified, on beholding the dawn of a new era of truth and sincerity in the expression of the will of the people.

It is now necessary and indispensable to purify the electoral system, and the best means of purifying it is for office-holders to cease to regard their offices as a means of gaining votes, and for the governors especially to cease to regard their administration as a ministerial agency. In exact reverse of the belief hitherto cherished, and the practice hitherto followed, the task of the dependents of the government must henceforth be to assure freedom of expression to all ideas and freedom of vote to all citizens.

With these elections should forever end the system of official candidacies, of administrative support, of the conversion of public servants into agents of the government, of the threats of armed mobs, of hinderances in the polling-booths, of the arbitrary distribution of certificates of the right to vote, of false returns, and of the miraculous resurrection in the official canvass of candidates defeated at the polls.

Far from wishing to perpetuate this melancholy electoral tradition, the government desires that its agents shall extend the amplest protection to all voters, whatever may be their opinion or their banner. Far from rewarding those who influence, menace, bribe, or falsify the elections, the government is resolved to hunt them down untiringly, and to turn them over to the tribunals without delay. In democratic societies governments must not be the judges of the electors, but are to be judged by them. Never must they set themselves up as sovereigns of the national will, but should be humble and faithful in fulfilling the judgments of the ballot-box.

One of the social phenomena now to be seen unequivocally and with pain is that to-day, after all our declarations, those in opposition to the ideas of the government show signs of failing resolution, and refrain from taking part in the vote as though some grave peril threatened them or superior force constrained them. But the government does not and cannot believe the people of the republic capable of hindering in any way the free exercise of the right to vote, knowing as it does that upon the exercise of this right depends the consolidation of the republic. Nor does the government believe, nor can it believe, that the difficulties of the present period of transition can in any way dismay the people of the nation that chose the Constituent Cortes of 1810 amidst the horrors of a foreign invasion, the Constituent Cortes of 1836 amidst the horrors of a civil war, and the two last constitutional conventions when surrounded by the tumult of armed and triumphant revolutions. The government witnesses with deep pain, and denounces with manly uprightness, the circumstance that the parties who most stand in need of full legality, now prefer disturbances in the elections, and are speedily disheartened in the electoral struggle if not protected by the shadow of the public administration. And thus it is that political parties are ever striving to direct the government of the state, and not the opinion of the people, passing from dictatorship to conspiracies, with no other polar star than their own interests, and no other goal than their own aggrandizement, even though these be won at the cost of justice and of right. And from hence springs another evil still more serious. The voters of the people, unconscious of their own high authority and sovereignty, await the signal of the government to vote for the candidate who may please and satisfy the administration.

While this evil lasts so long will last the two greatest calamities of our time—systematic insurrection and military pronunciamientos. Our sorely-rent social system will find no repose; and instead of hastening toward democratic institutions as a safe harbor of refuge, its forces will gather as to a field of battle. The government adjures all voters to repair to the polls, and there make known their will and their convictions. The government assures them that it will exert no manner of coercion either upon their voice or upon their conscience.

The government would rather that the diverse opinions should be represented in the chamber in the same proportion as they exist among the people.

If, from the calm heights where governments should ever dwell, far removed by their nature from all party contests, it were permitted to address the combatants, the government would direct counsel to those who have always striven to establish liberty and democracy in our country. And it would remind them that unreasoning abstention from the polls can alone give rise to reactionary conspiracies; and that reactionary conspiracies, if they prevail, which is impossible, can alone result in a dictatorship, which is the extinction of liberty, or in the restoration which would be the crowning shame of our country. The republic is now indissolubly joined to liberty. Its cause is the cause of progress. In saving the republic we save the rights of all. If the republic falls the right falls with it. The board whereat liberty may alone sit is the republic. And the liberal parties of the opposition will repent themselves, when too late, of their present errors: firstly, because they have sought to retard the vote of the people; and, secondly, because they have refused to contribute toward the better and more perfect organization of the republic.

But if in truth the government cannot address itself to any parties, it may and should address itself to the electors of the nation, and to them it now speaks. Assemble yourselves; calmly discuss, freely acquaint yourselves with all the problems that agitate modern society; choose the men whose purity of purpose and whose exalted patriotism inspires you with the most faith and confidence. You are masters of your convictions and of your vote; and if, from spite or fear, you do not cast your votes, blame no one for the consequences that may follow this act of moral suicide—blame only yourselves. The government confides in the prudence of the Spanish people; it confides in the calmness of its judgment, and it trusts that, heeding the dictates of their convictions and the voice of their conscience, they will be successful in giving form to the great principles of modern civilization, and through the triumph of these principles they may give strength to the rights of all and add to the greatness of our beloved country.