1886 by the partisans of Ruiz Zorrilla collapsed at its very out set. Very shortly afterwards the war minister, General Castillo, attempted to strike at the root of military insubordination, and simultaneously in every garrison of the kingdom the senior ser geants, more than i,000 in all, were given their discharge and ordered to their homes at once. No trace of revolutionary work is visible among non-commissioned officers after 1886. As time wore on, Sagasta found it difficult to maintain discipline in the ranks of the Liberal Party. Senor Martos and the Democrats almost brought about a political crisis in 1889. Sagasta clev erly affected to resign and stand aside, but without him a Liberal Government was impossible. On his return to power, Sagasta reconstructed his ministry for the last time, and an nounced his intention to make the re-establishment of universal suffrage the crowning act of the Liberal policy, knowing very well that he would thus rally round him all the Liberals, Democrats and most of the Republicans in the last session of the long parliament. The suffrage bill was carried through the senate and congress in the spring of 1890 after protracted debates, in which the Conservatives and many military politicians did their best to obstruct the measure. The increasingly violent opposition of the Conservatives was supported by the regency and accordingly Sagasta, of ter having secured the promulgation of the law of universal suffrage, resigned at the first hint given him by the queen (July 189o).
A Protectionist Regime.—Canovas once more returned to power and gathered round him most of the prominent Conserva tive and Catholic statesmen. The first step of the new cabinet was to adopt protection. Sagasta to please Senor Gamazo and the Liberal representatives of agricultural interests, had allowed his parliament to empower the Government to revise and in crease all tariff duties not covered by the then existing treaties of commerce. This touched most of the products of agriculture and live stock, so Canovas and his finance minister, by royal decree, enormously increased the duties on these imports, and particularly on breadstuffs. Then, in 1891, they denounced all the treaties of commerce which contained clauses stipulating most-favoured-nation treatment, and put in force in Feb. 1892 a protectionist tariff which completely reversed the moderate free-trade policy which had been so beneficial to the foreign com merce of Spain from 1868 to 1892. The effects of this policy verging upon prohibition were soon sharply felt. Foreign ex changes rose, exports decreased, the railway traffic declined, and the commercial classes and consumers of foreign goods and products were loud in their protests. Industrial interests alone benefited, and imported more raw materials, chemicals and coal and coke, which naturally influenced the exchanges adversely. But political divisions also began to show themselves in an acute form within the Conservative Party, chiefly owing to the rivalry between Canovas' two lieutenants, Romero Robledo and Silvela (Francisco). Once more Canovas had to resign and Sagasta, with great reluctance, succeeded him.
The two most important events of this new period of "fusionist" Government took place outside the peninsula. The scene of one
was the Spanish zone in Morocco bordering the Riff, the tribes inhabiting which had never submitted to the authority of the sultan and had always been very bad neighbours. An incursion by these tribes into Spanish territory and an attack upon Spanish troops resulted in the defeat of the latter and the death of General Margallo who was in command. Public opinion was in stantly fired, and the press called so loudly for revenge that the Government sent to Melilla no less a personage than Marshal Campos, at the head of 29 generals and 25,00o men. The sultan of Morocco lost no time in censuring the behaviour of the Riff tribes, and in promising that he would chastise them. Marshal Campos was sent to Fez to make a treaty, in which he obtained ample redress and the promise of an indemnity of .1800,000 which Morocco punctually paid.
The Cuban Question.—Colonial affairs gave Sagasta much to do. Senor Antonio Maura, the colonial minister, and Senor Gamazo, the finance minister, two moderate Liberals, attempted together to grapple with colonial questions, which in 1894 had assumed a very serious aspect. Marshal Campos, on returning from Cuba in 187o, had advocated some concessions to satisfy the legitfmate aspirations of the majority of the colonists. In 1886, in the first parliament of the regency, Cuban autonomist deputies (who had issued their first political programme in Aug. 1878) divided the house on a motion in favour of home rule and of an extension of the franchise in Cuba. This motion was negatived by all the Conservatives, by most of the Dynastic Liberals and by some of the Republicans. The majority of Spaniards were prevented by the Government and the press from learning of the disaffection in Cuba, so that they were loath to listen to the few men, courageous enough to raise the note of alarm during the ten years before the final catastrophe. For no other reason did Maura, in 1893, fail to convince the cortes, and even the Liberal Party, that his very moderate Cuban Home Rule bill was indispensable.
In succession to Maura, Senor Abarzuza framed a Cuban Re f orm bill (1895) so much short of what his predecessor had thought an irreducible minimum of concessions, that it was censured in Havana by all the colonial Liberals and home rulers, and by their representatives in Madrid. The latter at the last moment recorded their votes in favour of the Abarzuza bill when they perceived that a strange sort of eleventh-hour presentiment was about to make all the Spanish parties vote this insufficient reform. Before it could be promulgated, the tidings came of a separatist rising in the old haunts of Creole disaffection near Santiago de Cuba (1895). Sagasta then sent about 12,000 men to reinforce the 15,00o soldiers in Cuba under General Calleja, and was preparing more when a sudden attack made by offi cers of the Madrid garrison upon the offices of the radical paper El Resumen raised a question of discipline with which the authorities were unable to deal in the manner required by law. The impotence of the authorities on this occasion, which was the forerunner of many others, resulted in the return to power of the Conservatives.