PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS IN SPAIN.
To TUE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR.") Sir.,—The demonstrations organised by the Junta Catolica in some three hundred different towns and villages on October 2nd to protest against the so-called " anti-Catholic " policy of the present Government have done something for Spain. It has been made clear that there is within the Church of Spain a party of progress, of which perhaps the existence has been hardly suspected save by those who live in the country and follow the course of the dreary quarrel from day to day. As for the demonstrations themselves, I think any unbiassed observer must have been convinced that they were a fiasco. Those at San Sebastian and Seville were described as among the three or four most successful and important. It is said that sixteen thousand people congregated in San Sebastian. I was not there, and do not know what the facts may be. But I have it on the authority of the .Ferro-Carriles Andaluces themselves that the tickets sold for the special trains to Utrera, where the Seville " pilgrimage " was held, only amounted to twelve hundred and thirty-four, provision having been made for several thousands. Seville has a popula- tion of about one hundred and fifty thousand. We may take it that if, as both Ultramontane and Liberal papers declare, this was one of the most important meetings, the less -successful ones cannot have done much to shake the Constitution.
But the really encouraging feature of the event was the pronouncement against the demonstrations by what is coming The more we who are on the spot (and more or less behind the sacerdotal scenes) distinguish the gentle hand of the " Augustines" in the conflict, the more hope we see for the ultimate issue of the confusion of present conditions. Before the open quarrel of the Ultrarnontanes with the State declared itself there was little to prove that such a party existed in the Church of Spain; but no one doubts its growing foxce
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