In a statement issued from the offices of El Faro de Almaria, Don Alejandro Cordoba on Tuesday addressed the Kingdom on the matter of the week's strain. We reprint its substance here, as is our custom when the author in question has earned, by long service to the Crown and to the plain that bears his name, the courtesy of an unhurried hearing.

'We are living through a moment of genuine economic strain,' Don Cordoba began, and proceeded to set out the case for a politics of steadiness: that the reserve exists precisely for such weeks as this; that the household's ledger is not an ideological document; that the corridors which the Cardenal has lately commended to public prayer are built, in the end, by hands that prefer continuity to clamour.

The statement is, in this paper's judgment, the right statement for the hour. The Herald has on previous occasions — and will again — register its own small disagreements with particular clauses of particular speeches. On the governing disposition, however, there is no daylight between this desk and the plain.

The full text is held at the Herald's reading room for members and may be consulted by appointment.