Foreign residents, living as quietly and comfortably as usual, were considerably astonished when their home newspapers reached them, packed with sensational tales of revolution, incendiarism, military sedition, and wholesale executions, and asked what on earth the Spanish Government was about that it allowed these slanders to be propagated all over the world? Who was responsible for these perversions of the truth? What advantage was hoped for by those who fostered so colossal a misrepresentation of the conduct of the inarticulate proletariat of Spain?[13] The Censor handled the national Press even more sternly than the foreign, for the suspension of the Constitution gave the Government a perfectly free hand, and although the Constitutional rights were nominally restored everywhere except in Cataluña a few weeks after the rising, the Press was in reality gagged as long as Señor Maura remained in office. The Opposition indeed was placed on the horns of an impossible dilemma. So long as the party kept silence as to what they knew, Spain would continue to be held up to foreign contumely for a condition of affairs which did not exist. Yet if any Liberal dared to criticise the Government, he was clapped into prison until such time as it might suit the Government to release him. The position was recognised by Señor Moret, the veteran Liberal-Monarchist leader. He possesses the invaluable quality of knowing when to speak and when to keep silence. And throughout the time when the fair fame of his nation was being dragged in the dust, he urged patience and submission upon his followers, pointing out that when the time came to call the Ultramontanes to account for their conduct of the Government, the strong men of his party must not be found in prison, for it would be their business to speak: and the Liberal-Monarchist statesmen, without exception, supported their leader in his patriotic policy.