It will be seen that once the rule of alternating office by mutual arrangement be broken, the end of the whole system of gerrymandering the elections would be brought within sight, for any Government which enjoyed the confidence of the nation would remain in office year after year, once the people were permitted to make their voice heard in the elections. Señor Maura, or those who inspired him, of course foresaw this after the fall of his Cabinet in October, 1909, and his address to his party on that occasion marks an epoch in the history of political reform in Spain, although perhaps not precisely on the lines he intended. His party, he said, must fight without truce against the Liberals, “ex-Ministers and ex-Presidents of Council who reach office in collaboration with anarchists.” Nor must his own party stand alone, he said, for it would be necessary to seek the alliance of all, no matter how different their political ideals, who desired to check the advance of revolution. From that moment all relations between Liberals and Conservatives must cease. Any other course would be treachery, for only thus could the nation be saved from the reproach and the ruin with which it was threatened. In the opinion of Señor Maura, the party against which he thus proclaimed war to the knife includes every shade of Liberalism in Spain, from the most loyal Monarchists down to the rioters in Cataluña, while his right-hand man, Señor La Cierva, Minister of the Interior in the Ultramontane Cabinet, went so far as to accuse Señor Moret of being at “one end of a chain which linked Liberals, Radicals, Democrats, Republicans, and Socialists with the persons who fired the Religious Houses in Barcelona and scattered anarchy broadcast by encouraging the abominable sedition taught in the lay schools.” When Señor Maura declared that all relations between the two parties must cease, he no doubt expected that the party to obtain power and keep it would be his own. But the dissatisfaction caused in his own party by his violent speech showed that they did not all share his views, and for a time it looked as though there might be a split in the camp. The Clericalists foresaw days of leanness, for if Maura’s calculations went wrong and Moret was able to carry out his project of electoral reform, their occupation and their livelihood would be gone. How the dissentients were brought into line we need not inquire. But the occasion forced one of the most statesmanlike of the Conservatives to make a public confession of his faith, and it then became manifest that in Señor Sanchez Toca, ex-Minister and ex-Alcalde of Madrid, the spirit of Canovas and Silvela still survives, although he with one or two more seem to stand almost alone among their party against the tide of reaction.