Letters from Spain. White Joseph Blanco
to support their rights, fewer still would imitate the French in carrying fire and sword to their mansions.
For bishops and their spiritual power Juan Español5 has as greedy and capacious a stomach, as John Bull for roast beef and ale. One single class of people feels galled and restless, and that unfortunately neither is, nor can be, numerous in this country. The class I mean consists of such as are able to perceive the encroachments of tyranny on their intellectual rights—whose pride of mind, and consciousness of mental strength, cause them to groan and fret, daily and hourly, under the necessity of keeping within the miry and crooked paths to which ignorance and superstition have confined the active souls of the Spaniards. But these, compared with the bulk of the nation, are but a mere handful. Yet, they may, under favourable circumstances, recruit and augment their forces with the ambitious of all classes. They will have, at first, to disguise their views, to conceal their favourite doctrines, and even to cherish those national prejudices, which, were their real views known, would crush them to atoms. The mass of the people may acquiesce for a time in the new order of things, partly from a vague desire of change and improvement, partly from the passive political habits which a dull and deadening despotism has bred and rooted in the course of ages. The army may cast the decisive weight of the sword on the popular side of the balance, as long as it suits its views. But if the church and the great nobility are neglected in the distribution of legislative power—if, instead of alluring them into the path of liberty with the sweet bait of constitutional influence, they are only alarmed for their rights and privileges, without a hope of compensation, they may be shovelled and heaped aside, like a mountain of dead and inert sand; but they will stand, in their massive and ponderous indolence, ready to slide down at every moment, and bury the small active party below, upon the least division of their strength. A house, or chamber of peers, composed of grandees in their own right—that is, not, as is done at present, by the transfer of one of the titles accumulated in the same family—of the bishops, and of a certain number of law lords regularly chosen from the supreme court of judicature (a measure of the greatest importance to discourage the distinction of blood, which is, perhaps, the worst evil in the present state of the great Spanish nobility), might, indeed, check the work of reformation to a slower pace than accords with the natural eagerness of a popular party. But the legislative body would possess a regulator within itself, which would faithfully mark the gradual capacity for improvement in the nation. The members of the privileged chamber would themselves be improved and enlightened by the exercise of constitutional power, and the pervading influence of public discussion: while, should they be overlooked in any future attempt at a free constitution, they will, like a diseased and neglected limb, spread infection over the whole body, or, at last, expose it to the hazard of a bloody and dangerous amputation. But it is time to return to our Hidalgos.
As the Hidalguia branches out through every male whose father enjoys that privilege, Spain is overrun with gentry, who earn their living in the meanest employments. The province of Asturias having afforded shelter to that small portion of the nation which preserved the Spanish name and throne against the efforts of the conquering Arabs; there is hardly a native of that mountainous tract, who, even at this day, cannot shew a legal title to honours and immunities gained by his ancestors, at a time when every soldier had either a share in the territory recovered from the invaders, or was rewarded with a perpetual exemption from such taxes and services as fell exclusively upon the simple6 peasantry. The numerous assertors of these privileges among the Asturians of the present day, lead me to think that in the earliest times of the Spanish monarchy every soldier was raised to the rank of a Franklin. But circumstances are strangely altered. Asturias is one of the poorest provinces of Spain, and the noble inhabitants having, for the most part, inherited no other patrimony from their ancestors than a strong muscular frame, are compelled to make the best of it among the more feeble tribes of the south. In this capital of Andalusia they have engrossed the employments of watermen, porters, and footmen. Those belonging to the two first classes are formed into a fraternity, whose members have a right to the exclusive use of a chapel in the cathedral. The privilege which they value most, however, is that of affording the twenty stoutest men to convey the moveable stage on which the consecrated host is paraded in public, on Corpus Christi day, enshrined in a small temple of massive silver. The bearers are concealed behind rich gold-cloth hangings, which reach the ground on the four sides of the stage. The weight of the whole machine is enormous; yet these twenty men bear it on the hind part of the head and neck, moving with such astonishing ease and regularity, as if the motion arose from the impulse of steam, or some steady mechanical power.
While these Gentlemen Hidalgos are employed in such ungentle services, though the law allows them the exemptions of their class, public opinion confines them to their natural level. The only chance for any of these disguised noblemen to be publicly treated with due honour and deference is, unfortunately, one for which they feel an unconquerable aversion—that of being delivered into the rude hands of a Spanish Jack Ketch. We had here, two years ago, an instance of this, which I shall relate, as being highly characteristic of our national prejudices about blood.
A gang of five banditti was taken within the jurisdiction of this Audiencia, or chief court of justice, one of whom, though born and brought up among the lowest ranks of society, was, by family, an Hidalgo, and had some relations among the better class of gentlemen. I believe the name of the unfortunate man was Herrera, and that he was a native of a town about thirty English miles from Seville, called el Arahal. But I have not, at present, the means of ascertaining the accuracy of these particulars. After lingering, as usual, four or five years in prison, these unfortunate men were found guilty of several murders and highway robberies, and sentenced to suffer death. The relations of the Hidalgo, who, foreseeing this fatal event, had been watching the progress of the trial, in order to step forward just in time to avert the stain which a cousin, in the second or third remove, would cast upon their family, if he died in mid-air like a villain; presented a petition to the judges, accompanied with the requisite documents, claiming for their relative the honours of his rank, and engaging to pay the expenses attending the execution of a nobleman. The petition being granted as a matter of course, the following scene took place. At a short distance from the gallows on which the four simple robbers were to be hanged in a cluster, from the central point of the cross beam, all dressed in white shrouds, with their hands tied before them, that the hangman, who actually rides upon the shoulders of the criminal, may place his foot as in a stirrup,7—was raised a scaffold about ten feet high, on an area of about fifteen by twenty, the whole of which and down to the ground, on all sides, was covered with black baize. In the centre of the scaffold was erected a sort of arm-chair, with a stake for its back, against which, by means of an iron collar attached to a screw, the neck is crushed by one turn of the handle. This machine is called Garrote—“a stick”—from the old-fashioned method of strangling, by twisting the fatal cord with a stick. Two flights of steps on opposite sides of the stage, afforded a separate access, one for the criminal and the priest, the other for the executioner and his attendant.
The convict, dressed in a loose gown of black baize, rode on a horse, a mark of distinction peculiar to his class, (plebeians riding on an ass, or being dragged on a hurdle,) attended by a priest, and a notary, and surrounded by soldiers. Black silk cords were prepared to bind him to the arms of the seat; for ropes are thought dishonourable. After kneeling to receive the last absolution from the priest, he took off a ring, with which the unfortunate man had been provided for that melancholy occasion. According to etiquette he should have disdainfully thrown it down for the executioner; but, as a mark of Christian humility, he put it into his hand. The sentence being executed, four silver candlesticks, five feet high, with burning wax-candles of a proportionate length and thickness, were placed at the corners of the scaffold; and in about three hours, a suitable funeral was conducted by the posthumous friends of the noble robber, who, had they assisted him to settle in life with half of what they spent in this absurd and disgusting show, might, perhaps have saved him from his fatal end. But these honours being what is called a positive act of noblesse, of which a due certificate is given to the surviving parties, to be recorded among the legal proofs of their rank; they may have acted under the idea that their
A name denoting the plain unsophisticated Spaniard.
The Cortes have abolished this barbarous method of inflicting death.