Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/33

 earn the money. He drew his cloak about him with the dignity of a hidalgo, as he replied: "Madam, I am a beggar, not a labourer." The Church is directly responsible for this tribe of repulsive idlers. Her edifices are thrown open periodically that pious ladies may distribute bread, wine, and cigarettes to the sitting crowd of professional beggars.

Far heavier, however, is the guilt of the clergy in regard to the atrocious proportion of illiterates in Spain. We in England are urged to regard the Catholic Church as the great founder of schools, the educator of Europe. The claim is easily tested. There are still three parts of Europe where her power is unbroken—Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy. In Spain the proportion of illiterates is 68 per cent., in Portugal it is 78 per cent., and in southern Italy—in Calabria—it is 79 per cent. of the population.

I have explained that a law of compulsory education was passed in Spain, under Liberal pressure. By 1877 four millions out of sixteen could read and write, and in the subsequent thirty years the ratio has only arisen to six in eighteen and a-half million people. The teacher is awarded a salary of about £20 a year, so that the character of such instruction as is given may easily be conjectured. But the State will not even provide this sum, and schoolmasters are thrown on the voluntary donations of parents. The result is that the vast majority of the children get no instruction, and the schoolmaster is the butt of Spanish wit. The Madrid papers gave a case in 1903 of a master who canvassed a district to find how many parents would contribute if he opened a school. Three families in one hundred promised to contribute. In another place, not far from Madrid, the alcalde endeavoured to enforce the law, which is universally disregarded, that there should be no bull-fights where the master's salary was not paid. The infuriated people drove the teacher to the plaza and baited him. Thousands of children in Madrid itself have no school accommodation.

For this state of uncivilisation the guilt must be equally divided between the Church and the State. Neither wishes to see the people educated. The reasons of the Church will be suspected by the reader without difficulty. The reasons of the statesmen of Spain for withholding education will