More sincere than the monarchists, Castelar made a strong protest against the mode of Parliamentary elections, for he said: “The census is a lie, votes do not exist, and scrutineers destroy what there are.” This statement of facts could not be refuted, and the Central Union gave voice to the opinion that “municipal elections, like all others, should be the result of universal opinion, and that the indirect intervention of the Ministers was deserving of censure.” Such expressions of opinion show that there was a deeply rooted feeling of the falsity of the Spanish Parliamentary system, but it required politicians to be patriots to reform them. The corruptions in the Spanish colonies were, indeed, a standing proof of the evil wrought by the Parliamentary system of patronage, as it introduced people to places of importance in the colonies who were utterly unfit for them. The Marquis of Salamanca made a vehement protest against these abuses in the colonies, which were estranging them from the mother-country; and Maura, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, made one of his first marks as an orator by setting forth before the Congress the evils of the dishonest actions of those whose advance had been due to their patrons instead of their patriotism. Canovas declared in the Congress that “he was very anxious that the Great Antilles should elect its own representatives, so that its voice could be heard in the national Congress”; but, unfortunately, the statesman did nothing to promote such an advisable course, and the leaders of the political groups held to the power which they gained from the patronage of the colonial posts. Canovas, who now called himself the “Liberal-Conservative,” in his fear that his Liberal rival should gain more partisans than himself, went on to say that “the Government recognizes the necessity of introducing great reforms in the administrative and financial affairs of the island of Cuba, for the political posts ought to be filled by the sons of the colony”; and he ended by saying: “When the triumph of our arms is an accomplished fact, and when the rebellion is suppressed, these reforms will be realized in a wide and generous spirit.” But unfortunately the triumph of the Spanish arms could not be accomplished, for they were led against insuperable difficulties, and it was an injustice of the mother-country to expect that her forces could prove victorious against the forces of a continent like that of America. It required a strong hand to save the Spanish Court from the overbearing of one whose father had adopted revolutionary ideas.