“In attacking Señor Cánovas the opposition papers dwell upon the censorship of the press, upon the reëstablishment of monachism under other names, and upon the onerous restrictions under which the free expression of thought is impossible. The ministerial organs reply to the first charge that more journals were undergoing suspension at one time during the liberal administration of Señor Sagasta than now, and this is true. The fact is that no party, and no party leader, in Spain, is capable of being penetrated with the truth, perhaps the greatest discovery of modern times, that freedom is good above all because it is safe. Señor Cánovas is doing only what any other Spaniard would do in his place, that is, endeavoring to suppress opinions which he believes to be mischievous. But of the impolitic extreme to which the principle is carried under his administration, though, I suspect, without his previous consent, the following fact may serve as an example. Señor Manuel Merelo, professor in the Instituto del Cardenal Cisneros, published in 1869 a compendium of Spanish history for the use of schools. In speaking of the Revolution of 1868, he wrote, ‘It is said that the light conduct (_las léviandades_) of Queen Isabel II. was one of the causes of this catastrophe.’ After an interval of nine years, he has been expelled from his chair and his book suppressed.
“If any change should take place, which I confess I do not expect, but which, in a country of personal government and _pronunciamentos_, is possible to-morrow, I think the new administration will find that with the best intentions in the world a country which has been misgoverned for three centuries is not to be reformed in a day. At the same time, I believe Spain to be making rapid advances toward the conviction that a reform is imperative, and can only be accomplished by the good-will and, above all, the good sense of the entire nation. There are strong prejudices and rooted traditions to be overcome, but with time and patience I believe that Spain will accomplish the establishment of free institutions under whatever form of government.”
In the course of Lowell’s incumbency, General Grant visited Spain on his journey round the world, and the embassy, of course, was busy in its attention to the great American. Lowell’s despatch to his government is a model of orderly, dignified statement of the incidents attending Grant’s visit, without the least of that free, personal note which characterizes so many of Lowell’s despatches. His letters home on the same event naturally are more gossipy, but they express well his admiration of Grant’s qualities.