There is no very important step in the Spanish political
drama to record this week. The fuller accounts of the revolution of Wednesday week (23rd April) substantially confirm the story we- told in our last impression. It is pretty clear that preparations had been made on both sides,—the side of the Permanent Committee of the old Cortes, and the side of the Government,—for a contest ; that Marshal Serrano and Admiral Topete, with Sa.gasta and others, had determined to support the Permanent Committee against the Government, to summon the old Cortes again (which the Permanent Committee were legally empowered to do by the la.w of the 12th of March), and to attempt as far as possible a. reaction in the direction of Conservatism ; and that for this pur- pose they had an understanding with certain Volunteer regiments of monarchical sympathies, while the military leaders, Serrana and others, are said to have tampered with the army. On the other hand, the Government had made their preparations, and when the insurrectionary spirit showed itself among the Volun- teers drawn up in the Bull Ring, who fired several stray shots at General Contreras and other officers of the Govern- ment, batteries of artillery were brought up against them, and a force displayed which was quite unexpected by the friends of the Permanent Committee, and quite adequate for its purpose. The reactionary pronunciamiento was defeated, and when the mob in a revolutionary spirit attacked, late at night, the building where the Permanent Committee was fulfilling its functions by sitting "in permanence," a hasty flight, favoured and protected by the leaders of the Administration, was the only resource open to its members. The subsequent decree dissolving the Perma- nent Committee was undoubtedly a revolutionary measure, but the revolution had been almost forced upon the Government by the elaborate preparations, physical and political, for a policy of reaction. Senor Figueras has returned to his place in the Go- vernment, and the Revolution has passed into a more chronic phase.
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