Pedro Salaverría to the state as formerly, January 15, 1875

Royal decree of January 15, 1875, charging the clerical establishment to the state as formerly.

[From the “Gaceta de Madrid,” January 17, 1875.]

Regency Ministry.—Ministry of Finance.

Preamble.

Señor: The advent of Your Majesty to the constitutional throne signifies, in the political sphere, concord, order, and liberty; in the moral sphere, the affirmation of these sentiments of piety, honor, and highmindedness which ever constitute the character of the Spanish people; in the economical sphere, the development of our national wealth and material interests, probity in the administration, and the fidelity of the state in the fulfillment of all its obligations.

The undersigned minister, being charged with the realization of the great and just aspirations of Your Majesty, in so far as refers to the economical adjustment and better management of the public finances, deems that no measures can be received by Your Majesty with livelier interest, at the moment of occupying the throne, than these which I, to-day, have the honor to submit to the high consideration of Your Majesty.

They aim at demonstrating that the government of Your Majesty aspires, in its very first acts, to repair the lessons which the turbulences of these latter times have caused in the rights of the creditors of the state; to make it patent that no obligation is to remain ignored or forgotten; that, according to the measure of our present poverty or of our future prosperity, all these obligations will be equitably fulfilled, and, in fine, that not for a single moment, or under any pretext whatever, can doubt or dispute arise respecting the compromises contracted in the name of the nation by the powers which have successively governed, constituting, in virtue thereof, obligations/for the public treasury.

Reducing, señor, these general ideas to determinate cases, the government of Your Majesty has found it necessary in the first instance to take up the anomalous situation in which it finds the payment of the appropriations for worship and the clergy, which are sacred for many reasons, and which should therefore be punctually satisfied, thus relieving so venerable a class from the state of abandonment and misery in which they now are.

Such obligations, by virtue of the laws of the kingdom, and of treaties with the Holy See, were previously comprised in the general estimates of the state, and were discharged without interruption for the space of many years.

The last estimates in which they figured as a whole were those of 1870–’71. But, before then, the law of December 18, 1869, which deprived of their offices and of their salaries or pensions all those functionaries who did not swear fidelity to the constitution of that year, was applied to the clergy, without taking into account the fact that the sums assigned to them were not the recompense of an administrative function, but were in compensation of ancient rights and properties which the church had ceded to the state in the interest of the general public welfare.

Notwithstanding that measure, the clerical allowances were paid in some dioceses in part, thus establishing unjust inequalities.

At this stage of the matter there was a government which proposed to the Cortes to transfer to the provincial and municipal exchequer the totality of the ecclesiastical obligations; the project, although discussed by the Cortes, did not go so far as to receive the sanction of the crown, doubtless because, on better appreciation of its inconveniences from every point of view, it was abandoned, with the intention of returning to the regular and just order of things, and of making the state alone responsible for what was its own and unavoidable obligation.

The result was, therefore, that at one time, because of the exigency of a political oath, and at another by reason of the ecclesiastical estimates being separated from the general estimates, in the expectancy, perhaps, of the adoption of a definitive form of payment, the obligations of worship and the clergy were the only ones for which, during the last five years, no financial appropriation was made, nor payments, except those made as before stated, to a limited number of dioceses.

The last administration, with the view, doubtless, of putting an end to such a state of things, embodied in the present budget a provision according to which the estimates for the ecclesiastical obligations were to be considered augmented in the amount necessary for their payment, in conformity to the arrangement between the government and the Holy See; but the government of Your Majesty deems that it is its duty, in the fulfillment of laws and solemn stipulations, which cannot be ignored, to comprise forthwith in the current estimates the necessary credits for the appropriations for public worship and the clergy, which shall be payable from the present month, and executing an early liquidation which shall determine the sum of the particular and general arrears of these obligations, in order to establish the form in which the treasury may meet, according as its resources permit, so considerable a deficit.

The government trusts that, at the conclusion of the war, when it becomes possible to fix the sure and permanent resources upon which the state is to count for meeting the general expenditures for which it is answerable, the church, as it has itself shown in past times, will not be the last to lend its aid, without sparing sacrifices, to placing the public treasury in a condition to bear, with economy and order, the weighty burden which has been cast upon it by the political disturbances of every epoch and the misfortunes of the kingdom.

For these considerations, the undersigned, in accord with the council of ministers, has the honor to submit to the approbation of Your Majesty the annexed draught of a decree: