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archy. I said this because I know that, although the Assembly and the official authorities can make laws, they cannot decree ideas or sentiments, those real and solid foundations of institutions. Formerly, in other times, kings were representative of the national dignity, and now from those same benches we have heard that they sold their native soil to a foreigner and even prostrated themselves at his feet, the people in the meantime answering the enemy with the second of May and the siege of Saragossa. Formerly poetry, addressing the throne, exclaimed:

"Oh! what a profound abyss

Of iniquity and malice

The mighty of the world

Have made of your justice!"

Formerly art sketched the apotheosis of Charles V. with Titian's brush, or the ladies-in-waiting of Philip VI. with the brush of Velasquez; now it sketches the image of the communists, of the victims of Charles V., or the ship in which the Puritans took the republic to the bosom of virgin America. Formerly, the gala days of the people were the birthdays of kings and the anniversaries of the beginning of their reigns. Now, the great days of cele bration are the tenth of August, the thirtieth of July, the twenty-fourth of February, and the twenty-ninth of September, days marking the expulsion of kings. For merly, when a navigator landed in America, or an explorer went into the interior of a new country, the purest piece of gold, the largest pearl, the clearest diamond was reserved for the king. Now, your Minister of the Treasury claims from the king even the clasp which holds the royal

mantle about his shoulders. I will not continue this paral· lel, as the Chamber clearly sees the application.

What does this mean? What does it signify? If the throne has fallen, if the throne is broken, if the throne is dishonored, if the throne cannot be restored, Conservatives, Unionists, Progressists, Democrats, repeat with the poet:

“Mankind, weep;

All of you laid your hands on him."

As there is no possibility of establishing the monarchy, as no candidate acceptable to all can be found, it is necessary, it is indispensable to get rid of the suspense, and I say that we should establish a republic. Have you not said that the forms of government are accidental? Gentlemen, you know the republic I want. It is a federal republic. I shall always defend the federal republic. I am a Federal, but, deputies, understand one thing, the republic is a form of government which admits many conditions, and which has many grades. From the republic of Venice to that of Switzerland there is an immense scale. Adjoining Mexico, where Church and State are separated, there is Guatemala, where the clergy have great power. Close to the decentralized and federal Argentine Republic is the Chilian Republic, another decentralized country enjoying great prosperity, its paper money being quoted in all the markets of Europe as high as that of England. Conse quently, deputies, amid this great affliction and this great trouble and this unstable equilibrium, which surrounds you, you can establish a form of government which is of the people and for the people, a form of government in harmony with the institutions you have proclaimed, and

with the sentiment which all of you guard in the bottom of your hearts.

Have you not seen in history the inability of an assem. bly or any power to establish a form of government in conflict with great ideas? Remember the eighteenth cent ury. Never had a monarchy attained more power, never was absolutism so strong, never was the destruction of obstacles in the way of kings more complete. Philosophy ascended the throne with them, ascended with Charles III. and Aranda and Tombal. It ascended with Joseph I., with Frederick the Great, with Leopold of Tuscany. All seemed to conspire to establish the same idea, the idea of a philosophy and a liberalism. And did they succeed? No, they were the Baptists of the Revolution. They repented late, and the philosophy they had thrown at the feet of the thrones came to naught. And what happened? Some were sentenced by the Assembly. The crowns of divine right were melted into cannon balls by the soldiers of the Revolution. What does this signify? That great powers cannot place absolutism above philosophy any more than you can build monarchical institutions on individual rights. Therefore, I beseech you to establish the republic. You are assured of our patriotism, our great interest in the country, our abnegation. Cato committed suicide because he found a Cæsar. Radicals of Spain, do not commit suicide because you cannot find a monarch. I have spoken.

IN THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA

AN EXAMPLE OF CASTELAR'S PROSE STYLE

O YOU believe that death is the end of our being?
I have never thought so. If it be, then the uni-

verse is created solely for destruction; and God is a child who has formed the world like a castle of cards, for the pleasure of overturning them.

The vegetable consumes the earth, the ox and the sheep graze upon the vegetable; we eat the ox and the sheep, and invisible agents which we call death or nothingness con. sume us. In the scale of existence some creatures serve only to destroy other creatures, and the universe is like an enormous polypus with a capacious stomach, or, if you desire a more classic image, a catafalque upon which burns a funeral torch, and is created the statue of fatal law. Some are patient because they have been born lymphatic; many are heroic because they have much blood; others are thinkers because they are bilious; more are poets because their nerves are sensitive; but all die of their own characteristics, and all live while their stomachs endure, while their hearts, their brains, their spines are sound. What we call virtues or vices are tendencies of organism; what we name faith is but a few drops less blood in the veins, or some irritation of the liver, or some atoms of phosphorus in the bones, and what we term immortality is but an illusion. Death alone is real and certain, and human history is a procession of shadows passing like bats between day and night, all to drop, one behind the

other, into that obscure, unfathomable abyss which is called nothing, the unique atmosphere of the universe. Oh! No! no! I cannot believe it! Human wicked. much affect me as to obscure divine

ness can never so

truths in my soul. As I can distinguish good from evil, so can I separate death from immortality. I believe in the Almighty, and in a vision of the Almighty in another and better world.

I leave my body as armor which fatigues me by its weight, to continue my infinite ascension to the heaven of heavens, bathed in light eternal.

It is true that death exists, but true also that there is a soul; against Realism that would enshroud me with its leaden mantle I have the glow and fire of thought; and against Fatalism, that would confine me by its chain, I have the power and force of liberty.

History is a resurrection. Barbarians buried the ancient Grecian statues, but they live again here in this cemetery, producing immortal generations of artists with kisses from their cold lips of marble. Italy was as dead as Juliet. Each generation flung a handful of earth upon her corpse, and placed a flower in her mortuary crown; yet Italy is alive again!

To-day tyrants sing the "Dies Ira" on the field where unhappy Poland was divided. Yet soon humanity will approach, collect the bones, picked clean by the vultures of the Neva, and Poland will be reborn, standing like a statue of faith, with the cross in her arms and on her ancient altars.

I have always been impressed with the thought of immortality in cemeteries. But I felt it more than commonly in the Campo Santo of Pisa, filled with so much

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