The Conservative Ministry of Spain has fallen for taking the
course as regarded a scandal, which M. Loubet tried to take in the Panama affair. The municipal accounts of Madrid are all wrong ; and heavy peculations are suspected. The Mayor, a noble and a man of haughtily upright character, insisted on "full light," and when the Councillors resisted, urged their preliminary dismissal. The Minister of the Interior concurred, but the Premier, S. Canovas, refused, apparently in fear of the scandal benefiting the Ultra-Liberal party. The Minister of the Interior therefore resigned, and, on a division, the Chamber, though the majority is Conservative, condemned S. Canovas by an immense majority, only 107 Deputies voting in his favour. He, therefore, resigned, and it is supposed that S. Sagasta, Moderate Liberal, will be Premier. No one questions S. Canovas' personal honour, but he is obviously in- clined, like too many statesmen on the Continent, to the policy of hushing up, which the population, when it comes to questions of peculation, will not stand. It should be noted that both in France and Spain, while the representative principle seems to afford no defence against the sale of public influence, it does create a certain impulse towards the exposure and punishment of the offence,—which ought to be punished like treason under the old monarchies.
