The first part of the tragi-comedy in Spain is over
: ESPARTERO has given up the contest, and has fled in an English ship to Lisbon. The revolution therefore is consummated. What to follow ?—The hardest of all questions to answer. Certain men hold power in Madrid, but only at the expense of dismissing judges, and tamper- ing with the constitution so lavishly that their stock of patriotic repute must soon be exhausted. How to retain the power they have snatched they do not know. They seem utterly at a loss for a policy ; utterly unequal to determining what principle shall guide them—Carlism, Christinism, Monarchy, or Revolution : they cannot elect even a person to be their idol and palladium in lieu of a prin- ciple: they do not know what to do with the Queen ; to make her of age, or still a minor ; to marry her, or not to marry her—her marriageableness, apparently, being left out of the question ; when to marry her; to whom. Spain exhibits all the corruption, anarchy, and helplessness, of any territory the prey of adventurers in the middle ages. Its condition is a reproach to Europe.
Previous page
