Latin America : its rise and progress /

Front matter

Stywilngtca/ ^

PRINCETON, N. J. ^

.G2I

Foreword

There are two Americas. In the north, the “ Outre- Mer ” of Bourget, is a powerful industrial republic, a vast country of rude energies, of the “ strenuous life.” In the south are twenty leisurely states of unequal civilisation, troubled by anarchy and the colour problem. The prestige of the United States, their imperialism, and their wealth, have cast a shade over the less orderly Latin republics of the south. The title of America seems to be applied solely to the great imperial democracy of the north.

Yet among these American nations are wealthy peoples whose domestic organisation has been greatly improved, such as the Argentine, Brazil, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay. They must not be confounded with the republics of Central America, with Hayti or Paraguay. French writers and politicians, such as M. Anatole France, M. Clemenceau, and M. Jaures, who have visited the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay, have remarked there not only an established Latin culture, but noble efforts in the direction of augmenting the internal peace of the nations, and extraordinary riches. They are agreed in declaring that these young countries possess economic forces and an optimism which will yield them a brilliant future.

Several of these states have lately celebrated their first centenary. Their independence was won during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The year

FOREWORD

1 8 1 o was the beginning of a new epoch, during which autonomous republics were formed, not without tragedy, upon the remnants of the Spanish power.

The time has come, it would seem, to study these peoples, together with their evolution and progress, unless we are willing to take it as proved that the United States of North America are the sole focus of Transatlantic civilisation and energy.

We propose to draw up the balance-sheet of these South American republics. This is the object of this book. We must seek in the history of these states the reason of their inferiority and the data which relate to their future.

First of all we must study the conquering race which discovered and colonised America. We must analyse the Spanish and Portuguese genius, the Iberian genius, half European, half African. After the conquest new societies sprang up under the stem domination of Spain and Portugal. They were overseas theocracies, jealously guarded from all alien trade. Unlike Saxon America, where the Dutch and English immigrants held themselves sternly apart from the Indians, pursuing them and forcing them westward, in South America conquerors and conquered intermingled. The half-castes became the masters by force of numbers, conceiving a thirst for power and a hatred of the proud and overbearing Spaniards and Portuguese. War broke out between the Iberians and the Americans ; it was a civil war. Then new states were rapidly formed, without (r traditions of government or established social classifi- I cation.

These states were dominated by military chieftains, by caudillos. From barbarism and periodic anarchy proceeded the Dictators. We shall be able to study some of the representative personalities of this period, j and to disentangle from the monotonous development j of events the history of certain nations, such as

FOREWORD

Brazil, in which the social medley has been dominated by the principle of authority. In the Argentine, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chili we shall perceive a new industrial order, by means of which political life grows less disturbed and the caudillos lose their authority (Books I. and II.).

The study of intellectual evolution shows us how great is the power of ideology in these rising democracies. They imitate the French Revolution ; they submit themselves to the influence of the ideas of Rousseau and the Romantics, and of the doctrines of the individualists. America, Spanish and Portuguese by origin, is becoming French by culture (Book III.).

Here we proceed to the study of the part played by the Latin spirit in the formation of these peoples, and the perils which threaten them, whether these proceed from the United States, from Germany, or from Japan, and to consider the faults and the qualities of this spirit (Book IV.). Then follows an analysis of the problems and the future of Latin America (Book V.).

The conclusion to be drawn from this examination is that the political life of the Ibero-American peoples is as yet chaotic, but that some of them have already cast off the fetters of an unfortunate heredity. Across the ocean liberty and democracy are steadily becoming realities. In the battles of the future the support of America will be valued by the great peoples of the Mediterranean who are struggling for the supremacy of the Latin race.

PAGE

Book I

Its psychological characteristics — Individualism and its aspects — The sentiment of equality — African fanaticism.

The conquerors— The conquered races — The influence of religion in the new societies — Colonial life.

THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE . . .58

I. Economic and political aspects of the struggles — Monarchy and the Republic — The leaders : Miranda, Belgrano, Francia, Iturbide, King Pedro I., Artigas, San Martin, Bolivar — Bolivar the Liberator : his ideas and his deeds.

II. Revolutionary ideology — Influence of Rousseau — The rights of man — The example of the United States — English ideas in the constitutional projects of Miranda and Bolivar — European action : Canning— Nationalism versus Americanism.

MILITARY ANARCHY AND THE INDUSTRIAL PERIOD

Anarchy and dictatorship — The civil wars : their significance— Characteristics of the industrial period.

Book II Venezuela : Paez — Guzman-blanco

The moral authority of Paez — The Monagas — The tyranny of Guzman- Blanco — Material progress.

PERU : GENERAL CASTILLA — MANUEL PARDO — PIEROLA .

The political work of General Castilla — Domestic peace — The deposits of guano and saltpetre — Manuel Pardo, founder of the anti-military party — The last caudillo — Pierola : his reforms.

Chapter III. Bolivia : Santa-cruz

Santa-Cruz and the Confederation of Peru and Bolivia — The tyrants Belzu, Molgarejo— The last caudillos : Pando, Montes.

URUGUAY : LAVALLEJA — RIVERA — THE NEW CAUDILLOS .

The factions : Reds and Whites — The leaders : Artigas, Lavalleja, Rivera — The modern period.

Chapter V The Argentine : Rivadavia — Quiroga — Rosas

Anarchy in 1820 — The caudillos : their part in the formation of nationality — A Girondist, Rivadavia — The despotism of Rosas— Its duration and its essential aspects.

PAGE

“3

Book III Page

MEXICO : THE TWO EMPIRES— THE DICTATORS . . 1 49

The Emperor Iturbide— The conflicts between Federals and Unitarians— The Reformation- — The foreign Emperor — The dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz— Material progress and servitude— The Yankee influence.

CHILI : A REPUBLIC OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TYPE . . 1 64

Portales and the oligarchy— The ten-years’ Presidency — Montt and his influence— Balmaceda the reformer.

CHAPTER HI

BRAZIL : THE EMPIRE— THE REPUBLIC . . . 180

The influence of the Imperial regime — A transatlantic Marcus Aurelius — Dom Pedro IX.— The Federal Republic.

PARAGUAY : PERPETUAL DICTATORSHIP . . . I91

Dr. Francia— The opinion of Carlyle— The two Lopez — Tyranny and the military spirit in Paraguay.

Book IV

Conservatives and Radicals— General Mosquera : his influence — A statesman : Raphael Nunez, his doctrines political.

PAGE

Religious conflicts — General Flores and his political labours — Garcia Moreno — The Republic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

THE ANARCHY OF THE TROPICS — CENTRAL AMERICA —

HAYTI — SAN-DOMINGO ..... 222

Tyrannies and revolutions — The action of climate and miscegenation — A republic of negroes : Hayti.

Book V

Conservatives and Liberals — Lastarria — Bilbao — Echeverria— Montalvo — Vigil — The Revolution of 1848 and its influence in America — English ideas : Bello, Alberdi —

The educationists.

THE LITERATURE OF THE YOUNG DEMOCRACIES . . 249

Spanish classicism and French romanticism — Their influence in America — Modernism — The work of Ruben Dario — The novel — The conte or short story.

THE EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHY .... 271

Bello— Hostos — The influence of England — Positivism —

The influence of Spencer and Fouillee — The sociologists

Book VI Page

ARE THE IBERO-AMERICANS OF LATIN RACE ? . . 283

Spanish and Portuguese heredity — Latin culture — The influence of the Roman laws, of Catholicism, and of French thought— The Latin spirit in America : its qualities and defects.

German Imperialism and the Monroe doctrine— Das Deutschtum and Southern Brazil — What the Brazilians think about it.

The policy of the United States— The Monroe doctrine : its various aspects — Greatness and decadence of the United States— The two Americas, Latin and Anglo- Saxon.

A POLITICAL EXPERIMENT : CUBA . 313

The work of Spain — The North- American reforms — The future.

CHAPTER V

The ambitions of the Mikado — The Shin Nippon in Western America — Pacific invasion — Japanese and Americans.

Book VII Page

The foundations of unity : religion, language, and similarity of development — Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral unity in the same degree as Latin America — The future groupings of the peoples : Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles, Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the Confederation of La Plata— Political and economical aspects of these unions — The last attempts at federation in Central America — The Bolivian Congress — The A.B.C.

—the union of the Argentine, Brazil, and Chili.

The gravity of the problem— The three races, European, Indian, and negro — Their characteristics — The mestizos J and mulattos— The conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le Bon— Regression to the primitive type.

The caudillos : their action— Revolutions — Divorce between written Constitutions and political life — The future parties — The bureaucracy.

Loans — Budgets — Paper money — The formation of national capital.

Conclusion

AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES . 387

The Panama Canal and the two Americas — The future , conflicts between Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins — The role of Latin America.

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

GABINO BARREDA . . . . . 6 1

GENERAL JOSE ANTONIO PAEZ . . 6 1

GENERAL FRANCISCO DE MIRANDA (VENEZUELA) . 66

SAN MARTIN . . . . . .68

BOLIVAR IN l8lO . . , . . .71

GENERAL JUAN JOSE FLORES . . . .87

GENERAL JOSE TADEO MONAGAS .... I04

GENERAL ANDRES SANTA CRUZ . . . . II4

MANUEL PARDO . . . . . . Il8

DON NICOLAS DE PIEROLA . . . 120

DON FRANCISCO GARCIA CALDERON . . .121

OPENING OF CONGRESS, LA PAZ, BOLIVIA . .122

COLONEL ISMAEL MONTES . . . .126

JUAN ANTONIO LAVALLEJA . ’ . 1 28

RIVADAVIA

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

ROSAS, THE ARGENTINE TYRANT .

PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDE- PENDENCE DAY .....

BENITO JUAREZ ......

JOSE IVES LIMANTOUR .....

GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ .....

THE CATHEDRAL, SANTIAGO, CHILE

JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA ....

GENERAL MOSQUERA ....

CLEMENTE PALMA ......

RICARDO PALMER ......

RUFINO BLANCO FOMBONA (VENEZUELA) .

MANUEL UGARTE (ARGENTINA) ....

RICARDO ROJAS (ARGENTINA) ....

GOMEZ CARRILLO ......

JOSE ENRIQUE RODO (URUGUAY) ....

ALCIDES ARGUEDAS (BOLIVIA) ....

I PAGE iS4

MAP

Book I The Formation Of The American Peoples

When the Iberians arrived in America they found either tribes or peoples of semi-civilised inhabitants. These natives differed from the Spanish and Portuguese invaders to such a degree that their conquest was a true creation of new societies on the ruins of ancient barbarian states. Before analysing the various aspects of American history we must therefore know something of the genius of the conquering race.

Conquerors and vanquished intermingled ; territorial possession modified the spirit of the conquerors ; and the colonies began to dream of conquering their independence. After twenty years of warfare the republic became the political type of these societies, which were exhausted by Spanish tyranny. Two periods, one of military anarchy, the other of domestic order, wealth, and industrialism, succeeded in the new States.

HIDALGO.

A priest who prepared for the independence of Mexico from the Spanish power.

To face p.

Chapter I The Conquering Race

Its psychological characteristics — Irtdividualism and its aspects — The sentiment of equality.— African fanaticism.

Travellers and psychologists find in modern Greece the craft of Ulysses, the rhetorical ability of the Athenian sophists, and the anarchy of the brilliant democracies once grouped about the blue Mediterranean. Though its purity has been tainted by the onset of Africa and the Turks, the old Hellenic spirit survives in the race. A similar vitality is to be observed in America. The transatlantic creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the spirit of race survives : the Republic reproduces the essential traits of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous, flowing past the ancient landmarks. The same little anxieties trouble mankind, which no longer has the haughty moral rigidity of the old hidalgos. Belief, conversation, intolerance — all retain the imprint of the narrow mould imposed upon them by three centuries of the proudly exclusive spirit of Spain. To study the political and religious history of the last century in the American democracies is to add a chapter to the history of Iberian evolution. Beyond the ocean and the fabled columns which were overthrown by the pikes of the conquistadors is another Spain, tropical, and divided against itself, in which the grace of Andalusia has vanquished the austerity of Castile.1

If the troublous existence of the metropolitan state could be reduced to the simplicity of a formula, that formula would also explain the troublous history of a score of American republics, just as the deep root will reveal the germ of the vicious development of a tropical tree. But nothing would be more impossible than to reduce to an abstract and enforced unity the disturbed evolution of Spain, full as it is of anarchy and bloodshed. The Peninsula, divided into hostile regions, the refuge of inimical races, presents in its past such contradictions as defy synthesis. Amid this theocratic people the development of municipal liberties was premature. While feudality still imposed its authority upon the rest of Europe, Spain saw the rise of the free cities. Beside the eternal Quixotism which renounces the vulgar kingdom of the useful in order to give itself only to the ideal the wise refrains of the people express a dense, prosaic, positive realism. The Catholic nation par excellence furnished the Duke of Alba with the troops that were to conquer Rome. After long years of absolute monarchy the old democratic spirit was reborn in the Peninsular juntas which opposed the

1 Of the Portuguese conquerors we may say that in their individualism and their love of adventure they resembled the Spaniards. Their fanaticism was certainly less bitter, perhaps because they had not been forced to struggle against the enemies of their faith.

French invasion. From Cantabria to Cadiz we discover, beneath the unity of Castile, a splendid variety of provincial types. The Asturian hardness contrasts with the rhythm of Andalusia, the impetuosity of Estremadura with the dryness of Catalonia, the tenacity of the Basques with the proud idleness of the Castilian.

From this territorial complexity arises a turbulent life : the secular struggle in favour of national unity, the generous epic of the Catholic crusade against Islam, and the gloomy pursuit of religious unity by means of inquisitorial holocausts. European history is transformed south of the Pyrenees. Feudality is arrested ; the crusade against the infidel lasts eight centuries ; religion and empire are established in magnificence like that of the Oriental theocracies. In the wealth of this national development persist the racial characteristics which we wish to determine : individualism, democracy, the local spirit so inimical to great unities, and the African fanaticism which is satisfied only with excessive sensations and extreme solutions— in short, the heritage of a grave and heroic race, in a state of perpetual moral tension, proud in the face of God and king and fate.

Individualism is the fundamental note of the Spanish psychology. An Iberian characteristic, it has all the force of an imperious atavism. It exalts any form of action, of self-affirmation ; it inspires an unreasonable confidence in self and the powers of self ; it tends to develop human energy, to preserve the national independence from external pressure, to defend it against the rigour of the law, the moral imperative, and the rigidity of duty ; and it creates in exalted spirits an ardent desire of domination.

Strabo observed among the primitive Iberians, who were divided into hostile tribes, an immense pride, inimical to union and discipline. In his life and attitude the Spaniard reveals all the outward and inward aspects of individualism. The austerity and arrogance revealed by the very folds of the hidalgo’s mantle, by his majestic port, his sonorous speech, and his lordly gesture, the personal valour which turns history into an epic, the audacity, the love of adventure, and the isolation, are forms of personal exaltation. “ The Spaniards, in their simplicity,” says the squire Marcos de Obregon, “ persuade themselves that they are the absolute masters of all.”

Individualism explains the analogies between Iberian and English history : the civilisation of the Peninsula recalls, in some of its characteristics, that of the Anglo-Saxons. In both we find the premature affirmation of liberty, an excessive pride, and a long struggle against invasions. From this arises an aggressive imperialism : commercial in the north, religious in the south. In England the climate and the territory gave individualism a utilitarian bent ; in Spain the conflict with Islam gave it a warlike tendency. Idealism, the inward life, and imaginative exaltation created the Puritans in England ; in Spain the mystics and the inquisitors. But in the conquest of hostile circumstances the Saxon acquires a sense of realism ; while the Iberian, under a fiery sun, becomes in Spain as in America a hunter of chimeras. A symbol will express the resemblance between the two histories : Ariel and Caliban, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza represent the same eternal dualism of idealism and realism. Caliban has given England a vast empire ; the knight -errant has returned to his native La Mancha, exhausted by his barren adventure.

Spanish evolution, and the moral and religious aspects of Peninsular life, are to be explained by this perpetual exaltation of the individual. Stoicism is the moral aspect of individualism. It preaches virility {esto vir . says Seneca) : it develops the human will as opposed to Destiny ; it is a gospel of austerity in the face of suffering, of silent heroism in the face of death. Seneca is for Roman Spain the teacher of energy ; from his teaching proceeds that tenacious faith in character which touches Peninsular history with a grave virility. Christianity, which proclaims human dignity, becomes the national religion south of the Pyrenees. According to the Stoics, all men are equal before Destiny ; according to Christ, they are equal before God ; and of these two doctrines a formidable pride is born. Finally, in mysticism, the original expression of the religious genius of Spain, there is nothing to recall the pantheism of the Orient, nor the annihilation of man before the Absolute. The Peninsular mystics exalt their individuality, draw strength from the visit of their Friend, become divine through ecstasy, and aspire with the ardour of conquerors to the possession of God. To the German Reformation, which preached predestination, the theologians of Spain opposed free human choice, the efficacy of action, and the dignity and merit of effort. The Spanish religion was by no means satisfied with speculation ; it made for action and preached energy. The struggles of Spain have a religious significance ; the heroes are mystics and the mystics “ knights of the Divine order.” Ignatius Loyola and Saint Teresa dream of heroic undertakings and read the romances of chivalry. Mysticism inspires the warriors ; faith purifies the covetousness of the conquerors.

Wilful and mystical, the Spanish temperament is active, and expresses itself externally in conflict ; it manifests itself in comedy and tragedy. The Peninsular genius is dramatic. Adventure, movement, and the shock of passions are developed in an ample theatre which expresses all the aspects of aggravated individualism. The struggle is not only for independence, but for fame, to preserve the integrity of honour in the general eye. Jealous and 3 revengeful, this preoccupation in respect of honour, which is profoundly Spanish, inspires innumerable tragedies. Antagonisms, ruptures, theses, and antitheses abound in Iberian history ; the positivism of Sancho Panza, the idealism of Don Quixote ; obstinacy and idleness ; sloth and violence ; parasitism and adventure ; gloom and solemnity such as we find in the paintings of Zurbaran and Ribera, together with the frivolity of harmonious dance and festival and light-headed madness in the hot sunlight ; faith in the will and acceptation of destiny ; the ardour of mystics and conquerors and the cynicism of rogues and beggars ; heroic disinterestedness and passionate covetousness : these are the irreducible contradictions of the Spanish mind, which explain the long conflict, the intensity of the internal drama. On the stage we find the reflection of these conflicts, these indurated wills ; subtle passions, grandiose pride, lofty character ; tragedies with a touch of farce and comedies with a mystic background. The literature of Chivalry — the immense crop of romances, the rude primitive poetry, the Cid, the Children of Lara — is a commentary upon individualism and action. The great literary types — the hero, the adventurer, the mystic, the noble chieftain, the knight, the lover— are exalted individualities. The picaro himself belongs to this hardy family ; he is proud as any knight, and a goodly number of knights are picaresque. Subtle and sceptical, the picaro employs both cunning and heroism in the daily struggle for life. Of “ Gongorism,” a school of Spanish literature, Martinez-Ruiz has written that it is the expression of movement in language, a dynamic poetry for men of action. Dramas and romances of energy, violent epics, with nothing of the antique serenity : these form the true literature of Spain.

In art and philosophy and literature there are really no schools, but writers, philosophers, and painters ; such as El Greco, who left no imitators ; solitary individuals such as Gratian and Quevedo. But in Spain we see the triumph of those military and political organisations in which the individual finds the greatest freedom : the people, the tribe, the guerilla band, the battalion. The cult of rebellious and exuberant energy is general. In the relations of king and subject the same Peninsular individualism appears.

“Por besar mano de rey No me tengo por honrado,

Porque la beso mi padre Me tengo por afrentado.”

says a Spanish rhyme. Obedience to the king is conditional ; it is based upon the monarch’s respect for the supreme order of justice, and his submission to a tacit or explicit contract between king and people. Charters, traditions, anid usages limit the absolutism of the monarch. In the Cortes of Orcana in 1469 it is declared that the king is the “mercenary ” of the people, who pay him a “ salary.” 1 All Spanish obedience is steeped in this kind of pride ; the nobles of Aragon feel themselves individually the equals of the king, and collectively his superior. The cities, federated into hermandades or unions, treat with the monarch ; they form a State within the State ; they oppose the Government and force it to recognise their privileges. In 1226 the cities of Aragon and Catalonia demand of Jaime II. the grant of a charter of popular rights. Insurrections are frequent, and are incarnated in a hero of the rude national epic : the Cid. Mariana, a historian, authorises any violence directed against royal tyranny.

1 See Joaquin Costa, Concepto del Derecho en la Poesia espanola, (Estudios juridicos y politicos, Madrid 1884)

This individualism upholds a strict justice against the narrowness of the laws and the Byzantine debates of lawyers ; against sentences, penalties, and tribunals. Poems and proverbs express this continual clash between the juridic ideal and the law ; the Peninsular conscience condemns the partial and precarious justice of the codes. Joaquin Costa writes : “ Of all the epics known to me— whether national or racial — the Spanish has done most to elevate the principle of justice, and has rendered the cult of justice most fervent.” Austere and inviolable, the law represents a category of eternal relations, beside which all individualities are insignificant, even that of the king, and all institutions fragile, even the Church.

Stoical because it believed in pure justice ; nourished by rude heroisms, inward visions, romances, and legends ; exalted by mystic dialogues, and hardened by centuries of religious wars ; the Spanish spirit, full of enthusiasm, entered upon the Renaissance, that sixteenth century which was to reveal the new continents across the ocean, the laws of Nature behind her mystery, and to create imperious personalities which opposed themselves to Fate. Then Spanish individualism broke out into mysticism, audacity, and adventure : it was the epoch of conquistadors, of politicians, of inquisitors, of Jimenez and Pizarro, Torquemada, Loyola, and Cortez. Spain broke through the circle of the Old World, fought in defence of Christian civilisation at Lepanto, and of Catholicism in Germany and Flanders ; coveted the Mediterranean countries ; colonised an immense and unknown continent ; threatened Europe with the religious imperialism of Charles V. and Philip II., and, thanks to the legions of the Duke of Alba, imposed her will on the Pope. Her policy had the old Roman majesty and force ; literature had found its “ golden age ” ; philosophy proposed the vast harmonious solutions of Fox

Morcillo, and laid down the bases of natural and national law by the pens of Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto. It was a splendid prodigality of energy, creation, conquest, and heroism — the last stage of a history of violent stoicism, which announced a long and majestic decadence.

Distrustful of hierarchies, Spanish individualism created social and democratic forms. Traditions, doctrines, customs, and laws denoted an exact sense of human equality. “ Monachal democracy,” said Menendez-Pelayo, in speaking of Spain, because the levelling of all classes offered certain conventual characteristics, and because there was a Christian basis to the fervour of the equalitarians ; a “ picaresque ” democracy, wrote Salillas, alluding to the equality of the knight and the picaro, to the double phenomenon of a proud people making pretensions to nobility and a careless aristocracy continually drifting into democracy by reason of the lack of middle classes and the traditional idleness of the hidalgo. An anarchical democracy, inimical to hierarchy, proud and undisciplined, according to the analysis of Unamuno, in his profound work, En tor no al Casticismo; a democratic Csesarism, thought Oliveira Martins, for the absolutism of the monarch was not feudal royalty, but rather a principality of the Roman type. The king presided over a democracy of knights, mystics, adventurers, and rogues . This spirit of equality may be observed even in the formation of the Spanish aristocracy ; the Gothic and hereditary nobility is foreign to the evolution of the Peninsular. The national aristocracy is to be found in the bosom of the Church ; it is elective, subject to the current popular vicissitudes, to such a degree that the ecclesiastical councils are more truly national than the military councils and assemblies. Servitude is less rude in mediaeval Spain than in the rest of Europe ; the cultivator progresses, but disappears from the other side of the Pyrenees before the invasion of feudalism, and the hired or leasehold cultivator is almost free. There are tributary nobles : between the democracy and the nobility there are no irreducible divisions.

This equalitarian development is especially notable in the political world. In Spain feudalism is not a national institution, and the spirit of Gothic kingship becomes transformed under Iberian influences. In Leon and Castile the nobility are less powerful than in France or other parts of Spain, Catalonia, Navarre, and Aragon.1 The social classes are not superimposed in rigorous order ; cities acquire franchises, and “ popular seigneuries ” are formed.

The monarchy, too, undergoes this process of levelling or democratisation. The Emperor aims at equilibrium in equality ; he destroys the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the people ; in the political conflict he leans to one side or the other alternately. The popular tongue consecrates the equality of the social classes : “ In a hundred years a king becomes a thrall ; in a hundred and six a thrall becomes a king.” “ All are equal to the king, except in wealth.”

The Spanish commune lasts, because it is the centre of this great democracy. From the beginnings of Peninsular history we see the cities struggling for their independence. They reproduce the djemaa of the Atlas, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, amid the Berbers, the parents of the Iberians ; the djemaa is the African progenitor of the Spanish commune ; both make an equal distribution of goods, and endeavour to avoid poverty. The djemaa, or municipality, or commune, isolated and autonomous, constitutes the political unit : the State is a confederation of free cities. The Spanish towns defend their

1 Altamira, Historia de Espana y de la Civilization espafiola, vol. i. d. 229 el seq.

liberties against every form of artificial unity, whether Phoenician, Greek, or Roman. Rome reigns for seven hundred years ; but because she partially recognises the autonomy of the municipalities, the Spanish democracy ; she increases civil rights, founds small republics, which elect their own magistrates, administer the communal finances, and discuss the payment of imposts and the distribution of lands in their ward. Thus Spanish individualism is satisfied. Rome, absorbing and centralising under the Caesars, destroys local liberty ; but a deep-seated current re-establishes the autonomy of the peoples when the Roman power decays. Assemblies of free citizens govern the cities ; the Visigoth monarchy, at the suggestion of the national Church, respects the municipal organisation. Thus a hybrid system springs up, feudal in the Germanic character of the predominant aristocracy, democratic by virtue of the Councils, the Church, and the tenacious power of the cities. In the struggle against the Moors the kings compound with the proud, free cities, conceding charters and municipal privileges in exchange for a tribute of gold or flesh and blood.