The new government elected a new Cortes, and to that body the popular suffrage sent a man who was destined to aid the struggling Church and bring back a semblance of peace to Spain. This was Don Antonio Canovas de Castillo, an old statesman who had served already in the battles of his country. _CANOVAS DE CASTILLO._ It was in the midst of these disorders, in the face of adventurers ready to offend all the great principles of social life, liberty, property and religion, and all natural and constitutional rights, that Canovas found a role worthy of his character. He grew powerful in that struggle for the defence of Christian society. He stood almost alone in the opposition; but his energy was indomitable, and his courage almost amounted to rashness as he set out to give battle to the secret societies, to Masonry and to the International whose titled members filled the Parliament. As he ascended the tribune he heard the murmurs around him telling him that he was already hated. But his courage gave him words. He was called a doctrinaire. "A doctrinaire!" he said. "But who is not a doctrinaire? Is there anyone who does not profess some doctrine, either good or evil? As for myself, I know that my doctrine is good; it is the Christian doctrine, and I am proud to declare that I put aside the enjoyments of life as an end of existence, holding for certain that a Supreme Justice awaits all men at the doors of death. The individual who faces the inevitable afflictions of life, its maladies and its miseries, if you limit his aspirations to the times in which he lives, he becomes a foe of discipline; he carries his negations, not to Heaven, which does not exist for him, but to everything which proves an obstacle to his ambitions, to country, family, and society, to destroy them. He becomes an international. "Reactionary you call me! There is no one who in these days of trouble ought to bear that name better than I. I have heard that the Senors, Margal and Castellar, were reactionaries; and the successor of Proudhon, who has written his diabolical gospel, Chaudrey himself, he was shot as a reactionary by the Commune of Paris. You are preaching social and economical emancipation to the masses; but what obstacle has the workman from performing his labors freely? You promise social liquidation, the revision of property and of public fortune and their better division. What good reasons, political, historical or philosophical do you bring to support these theories? Are you bound to accept as Gospel truth, every idea that rises in the minds of men? Must you take every man as a Messiah who proclaims himself an apostle or a prophet? If you do so, you will rob the State of all security, society of all stability, history of all solidity; and if you are indifferent, the philosophic theorizers will soon plunge the land into a torrent of blood." [Illustration: ANTONIO CANOVAS DEL CASTILLO. Conservative Prime Minister.]