The

churches and some other public buildings, on the faith of an undertaking that this sum should be reimbursed to the treasury out of fresh sales of ecclesiastical property. Such a decree of course assumed and involved the whole question in dispute. The indignation of Rios Rosas in being thus dealt with was extreme. He proceeded at once to the queen, and demanded the summoning of the council for the re-consideration of a question in the discussion of which his voice had been excluded. cabinet accordingly re-assembled in the queen's presence, and her majesty, as might be expected, took the side advocated by Rios Rosas. The decree was rescinded by the vote of a narrow majority. O'Donnell and Cantero, therefore, had obviously but one course to pursue. They tendered their resignation as the alternative of the sovereign declining to relent. Her majesty, it appears, made short work with the Minister of Finance. It was a case of "it is no mistake: it can be no mistake: it shall be no mistake." Cantero retired. But the queen plainly told O'Donnell that she would have neither his opinions nor his resignation. Again he tendered the alternative: again she refused either. The Prime Minister was accordingly doomed to the last humiliation he was compelled to preside, like a visible dumby, over a cabinet in which Rios Rosas was the only confidant of the Queen!

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It was clear that any attempt to stave off a vital controversy as though it were an open question would utterly fail. Open questions" are those only which exist either in virtue of mere abstract speculation, or which are brought about by practical agitation where there is no intrinsic necessity for an immediate adjudication of the points in controvery. The financial condition of Spain does not unfortunately enable us to take any such view of the question of sales of church property. The revenues of the state have, it is well ascertained, been regularly on the decline since the overthrow of the Progresista government: the expense of the military department have been largely on the increase during the same period: no reduction appears to have been made in any other branch of expenditure :

and the nefarious policy of buying the support of civilians and of the army by bribes is probably being carried to a larger extent than for a long previous period. Under the Espartero ministry there was no excess of revenue over expenditure, but rather the reverse. What, then, is the case likely to be now? And by which of the usual methods resorted to by the prosperous governments of Europe, in junctures of monetary emergency, can the minister charged with the Spanish finances hope to implenish an exhausted treasury? If he turn to the dire expedient of additional taxation, what taxable articles can be found in a country impoverished and exhausted by the indolence of the people, and the collapse of commerce, and a perpetuity of misgovernment? It appears to us that additional taxation in Spain will prove as ineffectual as the tax levied on hair powder by Mr. Pitt in our own country; and that the national poverty will render charges upon essential articles of consumption, as illusory in Spain as charges on factitious subjects of consumption must be in Great Britain. And if the government seek to obviate this discomfiture by the expedient of loans, it is wholly impossible to conceive that any prudent capitalist would risk £100,000 in their hands, under the present forlorn prospect of its repayment.

It therefore seems to us that the remainder of the church-lands are doomed to a speedy alienation. Such a course, in truth, appears to afford the only alternative from national bankruptcy, and the military lawlessness and defection which an inability to pay the army would immediately bring about. We confess, we have so long regarded this policy of ecclesiastical spoliation as irrevocable, that we are quite prepared to acquiesce in the completion of a scheme, which indeed will consummate the revolutionary character of monarchical institutions in Spain, but will place the relations of the church on a less anomalous and more intelligible footing than they now stand. Previous to the accession of Espartero in 1854, this policy had been pursued so far that all the character of an independent institution which formerly appertained to the Church of Spain in a preeminent de

gree, was upon his return to power wholly done away. The priests, regular and secular, were then seen roaming over the country, living upon alms or upon spiritual extortion, as though the one class had just been ejected en masse from their religious houses, and the other from their parsonages. While, moreover, the question was maintained in this doubtful and undecided position, there was the less prospect of any satisfactory legislation being effected, which should place the Church upon more desirable and intelligible footing.

a

If we turn from these special questions to a contemplation of the general character of Spain, we shall long be lost in astonishment at the catastrophe which has reduced that country, in nearly every element of its social and political condition, to almost unexampled misery. But if the causes of this national depression lie deep, the means of restoration appear inscrutable. The evils of Spain do not rest in the mere faults of government. A systematically had government, indeed, points to an antecedent corruption in the social system itself, on which alone a vicious rule can be permanently reposed. No doubt the government in Spain is the worst that can exist; but if society were not rotten also, it could not exist at all. Into what a depth of social demoralization must a country be plunged where the army is a mere piratical organization-where its revolt or subordination is a mere question of bribery-where its generals openly and with impunity make war at once on the people and on the government; drive an existing minister out of office; seize the powers of the state in turn, with the grasp of dictators, to be themselves ejected by no vote of a deliberate assembly, but by the intrigues of a rival camarilla yet more corrupt perhaps than the infamous administrator whom that camarilla may displace?

The cause of all this can surely have no other foundation than in the total demoralisation of society, and in that political apathy which is at once the result and the index of national demoralisation. Corruption of every kind in government has been so long an attribute of the state, that men cease to rise up and punish

offences which may be defended on the example of every official predecessor, and which in fact have become such an integral and inalienable part of the Spanish system, that Spaniards have not only ceased to punish malversation, but look upon honesty as a chimera.

The social gradations of which the Spanish people is built up are directly calculated to favour this state of things. The mass of the people are by much too backward to take any part in public affairs, as they do in this country. The commonest man in Great Britain reads his newspaper and has his own opinions, which are really seldom irrational opinious. The difference between Spain and our own empire in this respect is, that in the former all political action vests in the few; and those few not seldom a band of self-interested partisans, each bent on plundering the country in virtue of some petty office-these offices being scarcely less numerous, or less detrimental to public interests than those of France before the revolution. The nobles and larger landholders rarely live on their property. Many of them habitually reside in foreign capitals. Those who live in Madrid are either mere men of fashion, or court sycophants: in either case they are political nonentities. In such a system the territorial influence is clearly at an end, and the territorial element in government is consequently extinct, or at least dormant. If we pass from that to the commercial element, or the influence of the towns, we shall find that men of trade care for little but commercial laws; that any general and material reform would not only call for immediate pecuniary sacrifices considerable in degree, but that it would benefit the territorial infinitely more than the oppidan or commercial interest ; and that persons in that interest, it being more precarious and less permanent than the landed wealth, are far less disposed than landholders to make immediate sacrifices for prospective gains.

It thus follows that the towns exert little more influence than the country. When therefore we eliminate these two elements of visible wealth and power, we leave every thing to the government. That government has, from time immemorial, been headed

by sovereigns outrageously unprincipled. For the last forty years the throne has chiefly been held by an idiotic, grovelling, fanatical king, and then successively by a mother and daughter each trying to exceed the other in every species of infamy. Where there is neither restraint from the throne nor restraint from the people, ministers are sure to be corrupt. This is the whole secret of Spanish politics. Every military man who can control the army kicks out an existing ministry; devours the country; exhausts its resources; and rules by the vilest usurpation, until he is deservedly ejected in turn by a new adventurer.

Narvaez, Duke of Valencia, has now triumphed again; and his success strikingly illustrates these observations. By the most persevering industry he has worked his way back to Madrid. A political exile throughout the liberal ministry of Espartero, he seized the first opportunity on the coup d'état of July to reinstate himself in power at Madrid. Defeated in that aim by the adroit rivalry of O'Donnell, he was compelled to await beyond the frontier until he could gain his passports. Narvaez, we suspect, was an important instrument in the restoration of the property of Christina, as an indirect means to his own exaltation. When the lands of that sovereign were once given back, it was obviously difficult to continue the proscription against her; and when that slur was once dissipated, all the action of her court influence came again into play; and that influence, of course, was directed in behalf of her ally, Narvaez, and in especial opposition to O'Donnell-the then existing minister-by whom she was cordially detested, and who had publicly given expression to that hatred.

The hundred days of O'Donnell assuredly have not been very glorious. He has sunk step by step from independence to ordinary ministerial. power, and from ordinary ministerial power to the cat's-paw of Isabella and the warming-pan of Narvaez. Growing smaller by degrees, and beautifully less, he at length glides imperceptibly from view, the entry of the Duke of Valencia into the capital being the interesting little vanishing point of this political landscape, It

is rumoured that the Duke of Valencia, three days after his arrival, paid a friendly visit to the prime minister of Spain; and after a pleasant interview informed that dignitary that he had relieved him of the cares of government, which he (O'Donnell) had so kindly discharged in his behalf until his arrangements had been complete for re-entering Spain. The prime minister grimly saw the fates inexorable; there was nothing for him but the pleasant alternative of capitulation and expulsion. It is said that O'Donnell "made his terms," and retired. We know not yet what they may be; but it can hardly be credited that Narvaez will suffer such a man to remain in Madrid; Cuba or St. Petersburg would afford both honourable and distant banishment.

Let us criticise for a moment the component elements of the new administration. Narvaez, we apprehend, in addition to the presidency of the council-a non-departmental office maiuly corresponding to that of First Lord of the Treasury in this country-will take the war department. The seals of the foreign office are given to Pidal. Pidal has two ideas he intrigues with Christina, and hates Lord Palmerston. He will scarcely, therefore, he regarded as a peace-offering either at the Bureau des Affaires Etrangeères or in Downingstreet. He intrigued with France and Spain in the iniquitous affair of the marriages of 1846, and got his Marquess's coronet for his infamy. Then we find Nocedal minister of the interior. Nocedal was formerly too revolutionary a politician to serve with consistency in any Progresista government that ever existed. He is now too monarchical to serve in any cabinet short of one headed by Narvaez. Consistency is in Spain the last chimera of political life. In fact, nearly every minister Spain ever possessed might truly offer the hardened and callous answer given by Gonzales Bravo to a member of the Cortes who had charged him with tergiversation, "that it was ridiculous to be always the same." The remaining ministers are nearly unknown to fame, or rather to infamy, for that is all that one can hope to say for public men in the Peninsula.

In these circumstances, it is clear that Narvaez has left behind him the

elements of a powerful organization in opposition to his own government. These men, it is true, have little cohesion among themselves at present; and very little permanency would probably mark any coalition that they might form. But ambition and self-interest are by much more powerful in Spain than all hatreds and all principles. There is indeed so little tie in Spain to what we call consistency in this country, that no man loses political status by means of tergiversation. The consequence will, we apprehend, be found to be, that the men now ousted from power, and the men still suffering from the ousting of 1854, will combine together with wonderful elasticity, and immediately adapt themselves to the politics of the hour.

The Progresistas, we have said, are wholly without leaders, or at least without leaders in a state of respectable organisation. Those who are not already too deeply stained by treachery and tyranny among the professors of opposite opinions, would probably be accepted as the organs and exponents of their policy. "Moderadoism" itself, too, is capable of assuming a thousand new features which may give rise to fresh complications, and afford a pretext for the creation of fresh ministries, without in the least degree disturbing the general constitutional policy of the state. There is the party of Sartorius-the party of O'Donnell-the party of Rios Rosas-to say nothing of those who have been longer excluded from power, and of stray sheep ready to fall into any fold.

It seems, therefore, impossible for Narvaez to continue his government on any other basis than that of supreme military prestige. In one respect, no doubt, he is better off than

at any former juncture. Generals in Spain have died out rapidly during the past seven or eight years. When Narvaez was previously in power, the leading men who had fought in the civil wars exerted a great ascendancy in Spain. Narvaez, when appointed premier in 1843, can hardly be said to have achieved a decisive superiority over his rivals in the army. Some of these generals have

been banished; some have died; and some, yet living, are already worn out. With the exceptions of Concha and O'Donnell, hardly one of these survives in eminence.

But there is another rock ahead, on which Narvaez will be fortunate if he does not split. The ultramontane party show symptoms of organization and of increasing power. Their hostility to Narvaez will be increased by the fact that he is by far too unbending a soldier to meet their views and embody their opinions. They therefore will never have the Duke of Valencia for their leader. We cannot, we fear, give the duke the credit of eschewing a policy of conciliating these enemies on grounds of principle. The indisposition probably arises from no commendable spirit of nationality; but because he will tolerate no interference, such as the ultramontane party would effect. Narvaez has no notion of governing but by the sword. The idea of governing by the priesthood his very soul abhors. In fact, he is a sort of Cromwellian dictator, without a particle of the genius of Cromwell; and he can deal with nothing but the sword.

It would of course be the effect of an ultramontane government to complete the work of reaction against the recent policy of the Progresistas. Reforms, at the expense of the church, would be immediately discarded with indignation. What yet remains of ecclesiastical property would be applied, not to the wholesome purpose of supporting the secular ministers of religion, but to hiving the regular priests in their old dens of iniquity; and, in fact, of rendering that property which might be available either for secular religion or for public material reforms, utterly useless. We trust that the calamity of such a government will be spared to Spain for any long period at least. At present, however, it seems as though the genius of reaction against government at once conservative and free, had set in with irresistible strength; and we shall probably see successive administrations triumphing at the court, before Spain is committed to an upright and intelligent, which can be the only conservative, policy.