Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/14

8 view of its own laws—criminally refuses, to provide. For providing those schools he was murdered.

But who in modern Spain could seek a man's life for erecting schools in which violent insurrection was not suggested? Here is the second part of my task. By a similar collection of authoritative proof I have to show how education alone, without any inspiration of violence, endangered certain corrupt interests and moved high-placed men to perpetrate a thinly veiled crime. As far as the Roman Church is concerned, the task is not difficult. From time immemorial it has not argued with heretics, but burned them, where the conditions were medieval. The conditions are medieval in Spain. My evidence will show that it was the Barcelona clergy who first demanded that the riots should be put to the account of the founder of the Modern Schools. Other and most extraordinary evidence of the guilt of the Spanish clergy will be found in the pertinent chapter; but if I indicated its nature here apart from the evidence itself, the reader would deem it incredible.

At first sight I seem to have a more difficult task in extending the guilt to the statesmen of Spain. In reality, one who is acquainted with Spanish literature could fill whole chapters with weighty denunciations of the utter corruption of the Spanish political system. I will lay before the reader such proof, even in the words of Señor Maura himself, of that corruption that he will understand why Spanish politicians dread the educator of the people. I will show that the device of "suspending the constitutional guarantees"—or suspending civilisation—is a scandalous trick for throwing on legally incompetent military men the work of ridding the corrupt system of its critics without the inconvenience of a trial. I will show that the bomb outrages which are pleaded in