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CHAPTER TEN Some Remarks by Filangieri on the Decline of Spain

Spain owes not only to the expulsion of the Moors … but to false principles of administration … the deplorable state of agriculture, industry, population and commerce.

BOOK 1, CHAPTER 3, P. 54.

Doubtless Filangieri is correct to include the expulsion of the Moors and the absurdity of several of the commercial laws which rule that kingdom among the causes of Spain’s decline. We will have more than one occasion to return to the disastrous influence of these prohibitive laws, of which all European governments formerly made such ample use. The lessons of experience and the efforts of all sensible men still cannot get rid of these laws, which are recommended by all governments’ flatterers, all the promoters, all the ignorant speculators, all the greedy businessmen. They frequently seduced Montesquieu himself. So hateful to governments is belief in freedom’s good effects! As for the expulsion of the Moors, today happily it is put alongside the St. Bartholomew’s Eve massacre and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Despite the shamelessness of writers in government pay, the progress of the century has gained this: were such measures repeated, they would perhaps find accomplices, but they would not meet with approval from afar.

Nevertheless, these causes, to which Filangieri assigns the destruction of an empire always favored by its climate and position, and for several centuries aided by a unique combination of circumstances, are only secondary and accidental. Or rather they are themselves the effect of a general and permanent cause, the gradual establishment of despotism and the abolition of all constitutional institutions.

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Spain did not suddenly fall into the state of weakness and degradation in which that monarchy was mired when Bonaparte’s invasion awoke a generous people from its stupor. Its decline dates from the destruction of its political freedom and the suppression of the Cortes. Formerly inhabited by thirty million people, it has seen its population gradually fall to nine million. Sovereign of the seas and mistress of innumerable colonies, it has seen its navy decline to the point where it was inferior to those of England, Holland, and France. Arbiter of Europe under Charles V, terror of Europe under Phillip II, it has seen itself crossed off the list of powers which have determined the world’s destiny during the last three centuries. All this did not happen in a day. It was done by the stubborn work and silent pressure of a government which limited human intelligence, and which, in order not to fear its subjects, paralyzed their faculties and kept them in a condition of apathy.

The proof of this is that if we look at England, we see commercial laws no less absurd, no less harmful, no less unjust among the English. In the massacres of Catholics, above all in Ireland, and in the execrable regulations which reduced all that portion of the Irish people to the condition of helots, we see the counterpart of the persecution and to a certain extent the banishment of the Moors, yet England has remained in the first rank of nations. It is the political institutions, the parliamentary discussions, and the freedom of the press which England has enjoyed without interruption for 126 years which have counterbalanced the vices of its laws and its government. Its inhabitants’ energy of character has been maintained because they were not disinherited from their participation in the administration of public affairs. This participation, even if it was almost imaginary, gave citizens a feeling of their own importance which kept up their activity. An England ruled almost without exception by Machiavellian ministers, from Sir Robert Walpole down to our own day, and represented by a corrupt parliament, has nevertheless preserved the language, the habits, and several of the advantages of freedom.

If one objects that the Spanish constitution was already nonexistent under Philip II, I would respond that despotism’s effect is not immediate. A nation which has been free, and which has owed the development of its moral and industrial faculties to its freedom, lives for some time after the loss of its rights on its old capital—on its acquired wealth, so to speak. But once the reproductive principle is dried up, the active, enlightened, industrious generation gradually disappears, and the generation which replaces it falls into inertia and bastardization.

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If one raises as an objection the example of other European states, who are no less strangers to constitutional institutions than Spain but who have not been subject to the same decline, I will explain this difference easily, by proving that these states retained a kind of freedom that was uncertain and without guaranties but real in its results, even though precarious in its duration. This gives me an opportunity to suggest some ideas about the political effects of the discovery of printing that I believe are important and that I think I was the first to develop.1

Formerly, in all European countries there were institutions associated with many abuses but which, by giving certain classes privileges to defend and rights to exercise, kept up activity among these classes and thus preserved them from discouragement and apathy. To this cause must be attributed the energy of character existing up to the sixteenth century, an energy of which we no longer find any trace by the time of the revolution which shook thrones and reforged souls. These institutions had been everywhere destroyed, or changed so much that they had lost almost all their influence. But around the time they collapsed, the discovery of printing gave men a new means of interesting themselves in their country. It allowed a new spring of intellectual movement to well forth.

In countries where the people do not participate actively in government, that is, everywhere where there is no freely elected national representation with very considerable prerogatives, freedom of the press to some extent replaces political rights. The educated part of the nation interests itself in the administration of affairs when it can express an opinion, if not directly, at least on the general principles of government. But when there is neither freedom of the press nor political rights in a country, people detach themselves entirely from public affairs. All communication between the rulers and the ruled is cut off. For a while, the government and the government’s supporters may regard this as an advantage. The government does not encounter any obstacles, nothing thwarts it, but it alone is alive; the nation is dead. Public opinion is the life of states. When public opinion is wounded in its principle, states perish and fall into dissolution. Consequently, and note this well, since the discovery of printing, certain governments have favored the expression of opinion by means of the press. Others have tolerated this expression, and others have smothered it. The nations among which this intellectual occupation

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has been encouraged or permitted are the only ones which have retained strength and life. Those whose governments have imposed silence on all opinion have gradually lost all character and vigor.

Such was the fate of Spain, subject as it was more than any other country in Europe to political and religious despotism. The moment constitutional freedom was taken from the Spanish, since no new path was open to their intellectual activity, they became resigned and fell asleep. The state suffered in consequence. Its death sentence was pronounced.

We must not believe that the gains of trade, the profits of industry, or even the necessity of agriculture are sufficient motivation for human activity. The influence of personal interest is often exaggerated. Interest is limited in its needs and crude in its pleasures. It works for the present without looking farther into the future. The man whose opinion languishes and is smothered is not excited for long even by his interest. A sort of stupor overtakes him, and just as paralysis spreads from one portion of the body to another, it also extends to one after another of our faculties.

Those who hold power would like their subjects to be passive in servitude and active in work, insensitive to slavery and ardent in all enterprises that have nothing to do with politics, resigned serfs and able tools. This combination of opposite qualities cannot last. It is not given to power to awaken or put to sleep peoples according to its convenience or its passing fancies. Life is not something that one alternately takes away and gives back. Human faculties come together: enlightenment applies to everything. It makes industry, the arts, the sciences progress, and then, analyzing this progress, it extends its own horizon. But its basis is thought. If you discourage thought in itself, it will be exercised apathetically for any purpose whatsoever. One might say that, indignant at being expelled from its proper sphere, thought wanted to avenge itself for the humiliation inflicted on it by a noble suicide. Human existence attacked at its core soon feels the poison reach even its furthest parts. You think you have limited only some superfluous freedom or taken away some useless pomp, but your poisoned weapon has wounded it to the heart. Human intelligence cannot remain stationary. If you do not stop it, it advances; if you stop it, it retreats; it cannot remain at the same point. Thus, although governments want to kill opinion and think they are encouraging interest, they discover that their clumsy double operations kill them both, to their great regret, and intellectual activity soon slows within the government

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itself. Where there is no public opinion a nation’s lethargy communicates itself to its government. Unable to keep the nation awake, the government ends up going to sleep along with it. Thus everything is silenced, everything weakens, everything degenerates and dies.

Such, I repeat, was the fate of Spain, and neither the beauty of the climate, nor the fertility of the soil, nor the domination of the two seas, nor the riches of the New World, nor, what was even more, the eminent faculties of that now admirable nation could save it from this fate. So true was it that it was the government which burdened this people’s lot, that as soon as a foreign invasion suspended this government’s action, the nation’s energy fully reappeared. What the coalition of Europe’s governments had been unable to do, what the bureaucratic ability of Austria and the belligerent ardor of Prussia had vainly attempted, the Spanish did. They did it without kings, without generals, without money, without armies, abandoned, disavowed by all the sovereigns. They had to repulse not only Bonaparte and French valor, but also the docile and zealous collaboration of the rulers whom he had forced or accepted into the ranks of his vassals.

Some partisan writers have attributed much heroism to religion, to ancient mores, to doctrines scrupulously transmitted from one century to another, and above all to the absence of what they call revolutionary ideas; but religion, ancient mores, and hereditary doctrines had been unable to prevent Spanish power from decaying, its industry from languishing, and its glory from being eclipsed. Bent beneath the yoke, each Spaniard was detached from his own destiny, which his will could not influence. Put back in possession of his natural portion of influence by an unexpected revolution and invested with the right to defend his country and himself, every Spaniard felt his strength reborn and his enthusiasm set alight. The absence of government returning the full use of their faculties to all, the full extent of these faculties was immediately rediscovered. No virtue, no talent was absent from the roll-call: so much is the most unequal struggle preferable to servitude!

Do you require additional proof of this important truth? By a deplorable fate, an oppressive government followed this inspired struggle, these patriotic victories. Informers and courtesans, a race hostile to kings and peoples alike, fooled a monarch who was led astray by inexperience and the prejudices of the day. Suddenly apathy, collapse, disgust for work, stagnation of industry, interruption of trade, fall of credit—all the symptoms of decadence and ruin

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which had signaled the decline of old Spain—reappeared in a Spain delivered from the foreigner. However, the causes to which its triumphs had allegedly been linked had lost none of their intensity. Spain possessed both its excessive worship and its attachment to its ancestors’ mores. But freedom had departed: it has now returned and already it is reopening all the springs of prosperity.

While I was writing this about Spain, a thought came to me; why should I silence it?

At the moment when a magnanimous nation which had just broken its fetters associated its deliverance with the king who governed it, at the moment when that king himself consecrated the new social pact by sacred oaths, how did it come about that in other parts of Europe some men seemed to have made it their task to smother the seeds of good, eternalize hatred, and resuscitate suspicion? How did it happen that in France, tools of I don’t know what faction, ambassadors created by themselves, or missionaries of I don’t know what secret power, dared offer criminal help to the ruler they compromised, and pursued a constitutional monarch with insolent and hypocritical pity? Do they not know that it was thus that foreigners caused the fall of the unfortunate Louis XVI? Have they forgotten that their crazy threats, their alleged information, their incendiary pamphlets helped royalty’s more direct but not more dangerous enemies?2 Safely seated far from the theater of agitation and danger, it matters little to them what pits they dig beneath the feet of nations and around thrones.

Enlightened and generous Spaniards, these men have already caused you many hardships. Since 1814 they have perpetually preached to your rulers both the legitimacy of absolute power and the justice of the frightful means necessary to preserve it. Their opinion seemed disinterested. Who can determine the authority it ought to have? Their voice came from afar: one would have thought it impartial, like that of an equitable posterity. Who can know to what degree it has influenced your misfortunes?

Of all your enemies, these men are the most inexcusable, perhaps the only inexcusable ones. Without passion and without immediate interest, they coldly applauded the persecutions, the sufferings, the tortures inflicted by your defenders. Let the victims’ blood fall on them!

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Despite these contemptible and perfidious adversaries, you will peacefully follow your noble path. You know that justice is the basis of freedom, that in order to found a constitutional monarchy one must respect its first principle, the inviolability of the monarch, and that the will of the majority is only legitimate when it does not wound any of the minority’s rights. You also know, by immortal and glorious experience, that your will alone is enough against Europe united. You resisted Bonaparte: heaven will not create a second Bonaparte. Napoleon was not able to defeat Spain, and the generals he defeated will be no more fortunate against Spain than was he before whom they succumbed. If there was one who had success accompanying his flag, it was because he defended a holy cause. Abjuring this cause, he will lose his strength, and Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo will in future be only the witnesses of his shame and his defeats.3