Don Rafael Montoya-Villanueva, leader of the Nationalist Party, issued yesterday from his party's headquarters a statement calling for "restraint in our appetites and restoration in our institutions," a phrase that will doubtless furnish the banners of his next rally. The statement, the second such intervention this week, weaves together the oil shock, the public-order debate, and what Don Rafael terms "a kingdom grown forgetful of its own grammar."

On the economic question the Nationalist leader was, as ever, eloquent: he denounced "the speculators who count their gains while the grandmother counts her matches," and commended the traditional virtues of thrift and neighbourly aid. On these points the Herald finds little to dispute, and much that deserves a wider hearing.

On the public-order clause, however, Don Rafael's reading diverges from the plain text of the amendment now before the Chamber. He describes the measure as "a restoration of civic order," where the amendment in fact extends powers of detention in terms that several jurists of standing have found troubling. The Herald, without wishing to quarrel with a figure of Don Rafael's standing, notes for the reader's benefit that the clause at issue has not yet received the scrutiny its breadth deserves.

Don Rafael closed by invoking, as is his custom, the philosophers of the schools and the saints of the coast. "A kingdom," he said, "is not a ledger, and a people is not a population." The sentiment is finely turned. Its application to the autumn's legislative calendar remains, for now, a matter upon which reasonable Almarians may differ.