9 DECEMBER 1843, Page 1

"Settlement" is indeed not a term to be used in

Spanish affairs: the Ministerial arrangement is all up again, and another "settlement" has been achieved, with less promise of stability than ever. The political world in Spain is like a quicksand, which can swallow up the incautious mariner, but affords no anchorage. The endless expedients to which those whom, for want of an apter term, we may call statesmen, resort to acquire some hold of power, show how rotten the ground is. The LOPEZ Cabinet, which came into power with the aid of a military dictation, Spanish Toryism, and the interests of the corrupt CHRISTINA, was trying in its last days to grasp at power by growing more Liberal: it was to rearm the people, by reestablishing the National Guard. To that Government succeeded OLOZAGA'S, which seems to have aimed at doing business for all parties : it set about restoring displaced Esparterists, while it stopped the rearming of the people ; it boasted alliance with Liberals and Tories, while it retained to itself a fragment of the late Cabinet ; it was put to the rout on a trial of strength in the Spanish Commons; and at length, so lost is its leader said to have been, that he, the mature and sage OLozeas, forcibly held the Queen's hand while she signed the decree to dissolve the Cortes which defied his mastery. ISABELLA was in a manner rescued from her Prime Minister ; and she has dismissed him. It must have been no small puzzle to know where to find one next : she tried a totally new lot, and commissioned S. GON' zsizz BRAVO to form a Cabinet. He is a Moderado or Conservative, of no mark or influence ; and nothing but incapacity and meanness can be augured of a statesman whose first deed is to make a personal attack on a rival politician : be moved to exclude OLOZAGA from the sittings of the Cortes! Supposing that there has been no exaggeration about OLozaoA's indiscretion, a paltry attempt to shut out his voice and vote only disgraces his antagonist : his misdeed should either have passed unnoticed, as one of the melancholy instances of a disordered time, or it should have been impeached in a sterner fashion. Meanwhile, the coarse and unscrupulous NARVAEZ continues to hold office as Captain-General of New Castile, and target-general for the discontented; and Ssaa.ksto, who alone of all the public men has gained rather than lost reputation in the turmoil, retires in hopeless disgust. With such a state of things, the new "settlement" can scarcely last long enough for an incompetent Minister to do much harm, except in keeping up the ferment.