15 JANUARY 1848, Page 1

Three incidents mark the extraordinary mutability of affairs in Spain

: Queen Isabella has four times been seized with some kind of convulsions ; Salamanca, the late Finance Minister, has been impeached ; and Espartero has returned by favour of Narvaez.

The public may guess at every cause for Queen Isabella's ill- ness but the true one. It is by some surmised that she is suffer- ing under medical treatment to suppress a cutaneous disorder to which she is subject. 'Others observe a coincidence between her illness and the revived allusions in France to the succession of the Dutchess de Montpensier,—as if Christina were positively a Lucrezia Borgia! Probahly the change from a brief interval of freedom and gayety to her old condition of bondage and dulness may account for the unfavourable turn in Queen Isabelld'is health. It does not the less threaten to bring on a dispute about- the suc- cession. Salamanca is accused of malversation,—of irregularly funding arrears of pay due to the Royal Household ; of aiding a railway in which he was a principal shareholder ; and of corruptly wink- ing at a breach of contract by which a protege pocketed large sums. In his defence he admits irregularity, but denies cor- ruption ; insisting that what he did was for the public advantage, and averring that whereas he was rich when he entered office he leaves it poor. There is an openness of admission in his defence which conciliates belief. It cannot be pretended that he stands alone in having been irregular, and there seems some hardship in singling him out from the crowd for special retribution: it is notorious that personal grtidge enters into the impeachment.