Chapter 6
Political journalism in Spain was born out of the decision by the members of the Cádiz Cortes to abolish restrictions on the press. Consequently the debates between liberals and conservatives in the Cortes were reported with great interest not only in Spain but also abroad.
One of the most perceptive and interested observers of the Cortes was the Irish-Spaniard José María Blanco White. The White family had adopted the surname Blanco (blanco means white in Spanish) when they settled in Spain; José María adopted the double surname Blanco White when he was in England. From his exile in London this rather severe, impassioned, intolerant young man became not only one of the foremost propagandists for Spanish liberalism but also a fierce critic of Spanish rule in the American colonies. His fiery polemics in favour of American independence were to earn him the opprobrium of both Spanish conservatives and liberals. His biographer, Manuel Moreno Alonso, goes so far as to describe him as ‘the “inventor” of Liberalism in Spain’1 and says that ‘one can say that until the Generation of ’98, nobody raised in such a continual and obsessive manner what, afterwards, has been called “the subject of Spain”.’2
Blanco White possessed the zeal of the convert. He was born in Seville on 11 July 1775 into an exaggeratedly pious Irish family in deeply Catholic southern Spain whose estates in Ireland had been expropriated in the Cromwellian era. His great-grandfather was living in County Waterford when he sent four of his five children abroad ‘to escape the oppression of the penal laws.’3 Blanco White’s grandfather settled in Seville, where he inherited the substantial business of his merchant uncle, Philip Nangle. The connection with Ireland remained strong when Blanco White was growing up. His grandfather’s ‘love of his native land could not be impaired by his foreign residence,’4 and English was spoken at home with ‘an Irish pronunciation.’5 Blanco White’s own father had been sent back to Ireland as a child so that ‘he might also cling to that country by early feelings of kindness.’6
When Blanco White was a child, the family business began to fail and the money that remained was ‘just enough to save the family from such poverty as might have entirely changed their condition in the world.’7 Blanco White’s aunt married an Irishman named Thomas Cahill, who took over the running of the business. Their daughter, Blanco White’s cousin, married another Irishman, by the name of Beck, one of the many Irish clerks employed by the Whites, who then took over the business in partnership with Blanco White’s brother. The White family in Seville thus preserved their links to the ancestral homeland. Blanco White wrote that his family was ‘a small Irish colony, whose members preserve the language and many of the habits and affections which its founder brought to Spain.’8
Blanco White was introduced to the family business at an early age, learning reading and writing from one of the Irish clerks. As a 12-year-old he was employed in the office copying correspondence, invoices, bills of exchange and bills of lading. When he declared to his parents that he wished to become a priest, they greeted the news with enthusiasm. Blanco White’s father was a devout man who would spend hours in church. His son attributed his religiosity to his having spent his childhood in Ireland and wrote of his father that he ‘combined in his person the two most powerful and genuine elements of a religionist – the unhesitating faith of persecuting Spain: the impassioned belief of persecuted Ireland.’ On his father’s death ‘multitudes of people thronged the house to indulge a last view of the body,’ such was his ‘purity’, ‘ benevolence’, and ‘angelic piety’.9 Blanco White’s mother, a member of the impoverished Spanish gentry, was equally religious.
His parents sent Blanco White to the Dominican College in Seville at the age of 14, but he was soon in trouble. Demonstrating the type of intellectual independence that would later lead him to fall out with his superiors in the Catholic Church, he got into an argument about Aristotelian logic with one of the Dominican friars. His exasperated mother removed him from the college and sent him instead to the University of Seville. Though he had already begun to show doubts about his chosen path, he did not stop studying for the priesthood. After his ordination in 1800 he continued to question Catholic doctrine and struggled to reconcile his beliefs. He later wrote:
At length the moment arrived when, by the deliberate admission of the fact that the Church had erred, I came at once to the conclusion at which every sincere Roman Catholic, in similar circumstances, must arrive. I concluded that Christianity could not be true. This inference was not properly my own. The Church of Rome had most assiduously prepared me to draw it.10
His conversion to liberalism – and English Protestantism – far from being Damascene, as he might have wished to paint it in later life, was gradual, founded upon a logical dismantling of the tenets that formed the basis of his education as a priest. Even before he was ordained, he had begun to think about how he might best escape the predicament of choosing to be a priest when he no longer believed in the Church.
In September 1808, in the middle of the tumultuous events that were shaking the political foundations of the country, a group of Madrid liberals published the first edition of a new journal, the Semanario Patriótico (Patriotic Weekly). According to Moreno Alonso, ‘the Semanario was nothing less than the first Spanish publication in which political questions were debated continually and systematically in public.’11 The Madrid lawyer and poet Manuel José Quintana was the driving force behind the journal. Quintana held a famous tertulia or salon at his residence in the city, which Blanco White, now an ordained Catholic priest, regularly attended. In December 1808 Quintana gave up the editorship to work exclusively for the Supreme Central Junta, and he appointed Blanco White and Isidore de Antillón the new editors. Blanco White and Antillón demanded in the pages of their weekly that the junta instigate reforms, and they defended those Enlightenment ideas, such as liberty and equality, that the conservative members of the Supreme Central Junta considered dangerous.
The government-in-exile in Seville was divided between the liberals, who wished to see the introduction of Enlightenment ideas, the replacement of royal absolutism with constitutional monarchy and the abolition of the Inquisition, and the absolutists, who wished to protect the Church’s and landed aristocracy’s traditional privileges. Blanco White found himself torn between competing ideas. He was opposed to revolutionary Bonapartism but unable to identify with the new sense of ‘patriotism’ that was coursing through the country.
I am indeed ready to acknowledge that I never felt that kind of patriotism, which makes men blind to the faults of their own country, as well as to their own. Spain, as a political body, miserably depresed by its government and Church, ceased to be an object of admiration to me at a very early period of my life … But I had that in my breast which would have made me readily sacrifice myself for the people among whom I grew up to manhood …12
In his autobiography, written from both a political and a temporal distance, Blanco White summed up how he had responded to the French invasion.
I never for a moment doubted the justice of the Spanish cause, or justified the manner in which Napoleon endeavoured to bring about the change of the Spanish dynasty. I only questioned the expediency of a popular rising. But since that rising had actually taken place I would have defended the cause of Spain against France at all risks.13
Blanco White and Antillón were forced to publish the Semanario under the watchful eye of the Supreme Central Junta; in an instance of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Quintana had now become the government censor. The Supreme Central Junta’s opposition to the editors’ liberal ideas forced it to cease publication in the summer of 1809.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos then offered Blanco White a position on the commission to organise the convocation of the Cortes. Jovellanos was a member of the Supreme Central Junta and one of the pre-eminent thinkers and statesmen in Enlightenment Spain. Despite his admiration for Jovellanos, Blanco White refused, not wishing to associate himself with the conservatism of the Supreme Central Junta. He did agree, however, to prepare a report on behalf of the University of Seville, which had been asked to give its opinion on the best way of convoking the Cortes.
To carry out his task, Blanco White requested that he be allowed access to books prohibited by the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. ‘It is true that we had very little occasion for such books as we were likely to take out of their possession; but there was a kind of triumph in this recovery of books that were completely lost to the world,’ he wrote.14 The forbidden books were stored in one of the rooms of the Inquisitor’s Palace in Seville. Blanco White sifted through the worm-eaten, dust-covered volumes that had been left to crumble into insignificance, emerging with some treasures, including two copies of Diderot’s Encyclopédie, of which he wrote:
That work must have been frequently seized by the Tribunal: the floor was covered with volumes of its various dictionaries tumbled in distracting confusion. I now forget what other works I was able to save from the worms, which, with a devouring power, of which people who have not seen their ravages in hot climates can form no conception, had reduced a great number of volumes to fragments.15
In 1810, depressed at the course of events in his homeland, Blanco White finally left Spain – and the Catholic priesthood. ‘The name of Priest irritated and depressed me; and yet I could not wash off that odious mark, even if I had tried to do it with my blood.’16 He was determined never to return.
His departure was a relief to his parents, who were convinced that he would fall under the sway of the Bonapartist party were he to remain in Spain. In fact he was a firm opponent of the French Revolution and statist terror in all its guises. However, such was the political chasm between parents and child that, before his departure for England, Blanco White’s mother had begun avoiding him in case he dropped some heresy into the conversation that would require her to denounce him to the Inquisition. About his self-imposed exile he wrote:
The desire to leave [Spain] had, for many years, been working in my inmost soul, and so identified had it become with my whole being that there hardly was a thought, a feeling, into which the wish of expatriation had not insinuated itself: but before this moment, it acted in the character of despondency, and like a poisonous root, its multiplied fibres conveyed a sickening breath to every perception and thought.17
This inner turmoil was hidden behind an ascetic exterior. Those who met the recently arrived Blanco White in London might have been surprised to hear of his origins in southern Spain, perhaps less so if they discovered that he was of Irish extraction. He bore a pinched expression on a face that was long, narrow and pale, colouring pinkish at the nose. His demeanour was quietly fervent.
Blanco White embraced England, converted to Anglicanism and began studying the country’s institutions, of which he became an ardent admirer. He began publishing a Spanish-language newspaper, El Español. For five years, between 1810 and 1814, he worked day and night, writing fiery denunciations of the political and religious situation in Spain, translating English newspaper articles and parliamentary debates in the House of Commons, a body for which he had much love, and poring over proofs in his flea-bitten lodgings in Duke Street, not far from Downing Street. ‘My health was ruined to such a degree that life has ever since to me been a source of nearly unmixed suffering,’ he wrote of that period.18 Within the pages of El Español he criticised the twin tyrannies of the ancien régime and Bonapartism while also casting a cold eye on the formation of the Supreme Central Junta and the regency council, the proceedings of the Cortes and the drafting of the 1812 constitution. He also attacked the Inquisition, describing its abolition in 1813 as ‘one of the most noble and glorious measures’ adopted by the Cortes.19
The British government had an abiding interest in separating Spain from its colonies, and it used Blanco White and his newspaper to further this policy. On the recommendation of the British ambassador in Cádiz, Henry Wellesley (younger brother of the foreign secretary, Richard Wellesley, and of the commander-in-chief of the British army on the peninsula, Arthur Wellesley), the government made Blanco White a half-yearly payment of £125. Copies of El Español espousing the Anglo-Spanish alliance and Britain’s liberal institutions were carried by British ships from England to besieged Cádiz. ‘The [British] Government at home had received (I have reason to believe) frequent information of the good effects of the Español in directing public opinion,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘and removing the suspicions and prejudices which a numerous and active Anti-Anglican party was constantly endeavouring to keep up.’20
Blanco White was now a paid propagandist for the British government, though he denied any editorial interference: ‘I formed and stated my views to the best of my knowledge, honestly intending to serve the cause of liberty and humanity, without giving way to any influence except that of superior knowledge and experience in politics.’21
In line with British interests, El Español was a firm supporter of independence for the American colonies, which earned Blanco White the enmity of the conservative members of the regency council and the Cortes. In 1810, in the pages of El Español, he welcomed the news that Caracas had proclaimed independence from Spain. Defending himself later from accusations that he was doing the bidding of the British government, he wrote:
The honest joy which this event raised in me was greater than my readers can imagine: honest, indeed, it was; for my exultation proceeded from the most benevolent and disinterested sources, and my approbation of the step which the Hispano-Americans had taken, was grounded on principles of the truth of which I had no doubt. I had for many years lived in an habitual detestation of political despotism, and of its main prop, the Church … My desire that mental freedom should spread over the world was neither limited nor qualified by political considerations. I knew that the Spanish Colonies had been cruelly wronged by the mother country, and ardently wished to see them legislating for themselves.22
There is no reason to doubt that Blanco White genuinely believed in Latin American independence, both for the reasons quoted above and because of his commitment to English liberalism. In Cádiz, however, both the regency council and members of the Cortes roundly attacked him as a traitor. They accused him of being in the pay of the British government and being fervidly anti-Catholic. Both accusations, of course, were true. ‘The conviction that I had been engaged by the English Government for the purpose, as they imagined of taking possession of Cádiz and the Spanish Colonies, was almost universal in that town,’ he wrote.23
South American independence meant open markets for British manufactures and cheap raw materials, at a time when Napoleon’s continental blockade was hurting British industry. At the same time the British government was fearful of French influence over the new regimes, of the possible repercussions for Britain’s own colonies, and of damage to the alliance with Spain. British policy was conducted through hidden channels. Encouraged by the Wellesleys, Blanco White disseminated pro-British propaganda both in Spain and among Spanish circles in London. The fact that he later received a pension of £250 from the British government tends to discredit his protestations that he was an independent operator.
When El Español ceased publication in 1814, Blanco White found himself at the forefront of the campaign to block Catholic Emancipation, which not only earned him the disdain of his Irish relations but also embarrassed his Whig friends, such as Lord Holland, whose son he tutored. His intense anti-clericalism meant that he was incapable of recognising the injustice of anti-Catholicism in Ireland.
On 3 June 1832 he travelled to Ireland for the first time, in the midst of a cholera epidemic. He had been invited to tutor the son of the newly appointed Anglican archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately, a friend from Oxford, at his residence, Redesdale House, in Kilmacud, County Dublin. He was exceptionally nervous about his trip to Ireland – dreading ‘the effects of my coming so near the Cholera and the Priests’24 – and fell ill shortly before departing. He later wrote:
Since the moment indeed when I accepted the kind invitation of the Whatelys, I have not ceased to consider Ireland as a place of danger to me. The idea that a mass of hatred is actually collected against me in this country of my forefathers is exceedingly painful to my mind. The contrast, therefore, between the love of my friends in England, and the virulence of my unknown enemies in Ireland, is always present to my feelings. Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum!* No sacrifices on my part can procure even a slight allowance of candour among people maddened by the mixed feelings of religious party, and political ambition! This conviction cuts me to the heart.25
Nevertheless Blanco White was impressed by the first sight of the Irish coast ‘as it rose out of the waves brightened by the early sun of an unclouded morning.’26 His welcome in Ireland was much warmer than he expected. Archbishop Whately and his wife greeted him affectionately. Redesdale House was a comfortable home with fine views of Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Mountains, and Blanco White would spend hours walking in the well-kept gardens.
His host was an eccentric figure. During his time as principal of St Alban’s Hall, Oxford, Whately was known as the ‘White Bear’. It was alleged that he trained his dogs to climb trees in order that they would jump down from the branches at his command to frighten undergraduates who were so bold as to walk with their female companions along the banks of the River Cherwell. He was a loner who preferred solitary walks in nature to the intrigues and politics of the city. He was passionate about mathematics, philosophy and education, writing several school textbooks and founding the chair of political economy at Trinity College, Dublin.27
Blanco White arrived in Ireland at an interesting time. The Whigs had appointed Whately to Dublin in an effort to reform the Church of Ireland and support the introduction of the government’s education plan, which proposed the establishment of a system of government-funded non-denominational national schools. Whately’s arrival caused waves in Ireland’s Anglican hierarchy. His fellow-bishops regarded him with contempt for his uncouth manners – he was prone to contorting his legs at the dinner table in such a way that guests might find his foot in their lap28 – and for his brusque way of dealing with people, but more especially for the fact that he was the creature of the Whig government.
Despite his grave misgivings before leaving England, Blanco White was also taken with the Irish people. After dinner with a Mrs Latouche and her niece, Miss Boyle, he expressed himself ‘very much pleased with this first specimen of Irish ladies in their own country. It would be difficult indeed to meet with more superior persons in any country.’29
But he was shocked by the virulence of the debate about religion in Ireland and the efforts of the Church of Ireland to prevent the government financing education for Catholics. He became depressed after hearing a preacher denounce the government for attempting to bring in a non-denominational form of primary education.
Were it not for my attachment to the Whatelys, and for the hope that I may be of essential service in the education of their boy, who is growing very much attached to me, and requires a tutor who will teach him for love, not for money – I would quit this country – I would fly a second time from the Popery of Protestants, as I did from that of the Spanish Romanist.30
He added:
Nothing can be more preposterous than the determination to compel the Government of Great Britain and Ireland, not to assist the poorer classes of Roman Catholics with national funds, unless they receive education according to the religious principles of the Established Clergy – unless they submit to learn reading and writing under (what they believe to be) a constant danger of seduction from their own religious principles.31
As far as Blanco White was concerned, this attitude on the part of Ireland’s Protestant bishops was just another form of religious tyranny.
When he was not tutoring the Whatelys’ son, he spent his time working on a book about the Spanish Inquisition. Despite his distress at what he regarded as the bigotry of the Church of Ireland, he came to enjoy his time in Ireland, believing that his arrival in the country had brought ‘a probable improvement in my religious notions and feelings.’32
He moved into the Archbishop’s Palace at St Stephen’s Green for a period to better concentrate on his studies, and began to question his commitment to the Church of England. But after a while he was unable to reconcile his growing criticisms of the Established Church with the hospitality he was being shown by the archbishop.33 After three years in Ireland, having rejected Trinitarianism, he returned to England in 1835, embracing Unitarianism. He died in Liverpool in 1841.
Blanco White’s life had been full of paradoxes, perhaps arising from his complex sense of identity, not least the fact that he was a fierce defender of religious liberty in Spain while denying toleration to his Catholic relatives in Ireland. His very surname suggests, despite his self-imposed exile, an unwillingness to leave behind his Spanish roots while desperately trying to integrate himself in the culture of his adopted country.34 He was one of the great liberal Spanish thinkers, who pungently criticised the Catholic Church’s abuses and royal misgovernance. Towards the end of his life, during his three-year stay in Ireland, he came to see that by denying political and civil rights to Irish Catholics, the Established Church was engaging in the same tyranny from which he had escaped.
A national religion which is not professed by the whole nation is a contradiction. A national religion which gives maintenance and precedence to the professor of certain dogmas, may be defended on the ground of expediency arising from peculiar circumstances. But a national religion which renders any number of members of the nation of a worse condition than others, if they do not profess it, is established persecution.35
* ‘So much evil could religion induce’ (a quotation from the Roman poet Lucretius, De Rerum Natura).