Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/23

 advanced bodies were endeavouring to found, in order to preserve the child from the mendacious teaching of the official schools. That was the origin of the Modern School." This emphatic repudiation of revolution, in a Republican paper, to be read by his friends of all parties in Barcelona, is decisive. It was not submitted at his "trial." It is supported by the testimony of all who knew him.

As I go to press an important article on Ferrer appears in the Nineteenth Century (November). The writer, M. Naquet, is not only a high Parisian authority, both from the cultural and the political point of view, but he knew Ferrer well, and had given material assistance to Ruiz Zorrilla in his revolutionary campaign. He was in close touch with Ferrer during the fifteen years he spent in Paris, and later, and describes their relations as "of the most fraternal character." Further, M. Naquet himself openly advocates the removal of corruption and abuses in Spain and Russia by violent methods. His authority is, therefore, quite apart from his well-known personality, extremely great, if not decisive. And this is what M. Naquet writes on the subject: “Ever since the days when he acted as the lieutenant of Don Zorrilla, Ferrer's point of view had undergone profound modifications. The successive checks to all the Spanish conspiracies in which he had been involved, and his deeper study of the domestic quarrels which had ruined the Spanish Republic of 1873, had imparted a new direction to his political ideas. He had arrived at the conclusion that the employment of violence is useless; that, despite its apparent swiftness, it is the slowest method in the end. Without going to the length of accepting the doctrine of resignation, or accepting the passive-resistance theory of Tolstoy—he was far from that—he believed that the surest and quickest way to progress was that pacific way which consists in transforming by means of education the conceptions of one's contemporaries.” These are not the ideas of M. Naquet, when there is question of such countries as Spain and Russia, nor do the words express a mere inference in regard to Ferrer's development. The point was often debated between the two friends, and to Naquet's contention the younger man used to reply: “Time respects only those institutions which time itself has played its