openly defies him to incur such a responsibility ; and
a councilof Ministers, assembled to deliberate, separates without coming
to a conclusion.
Such is the present state of the country about whose future government British diplomatists are so apprehensive I As at some minor theatre, the Duke de Montpenner has been " star- ring" it in the legitimate drama of Royalty ; but the pageant is over, and we hive again the ruffian burlesque. The soldier of fortune, with whom Queen Christina, when they were both in exile, conspired to overturn the comparatively quiet and decorous rule of Espartero's Regency, has since that undergone vicissi- tudes that illustrate -the condition of his country : his arbitrary insolence made his presence intolerable ; he was overreached by the superior finesse of the intrigante, and driven from the king- dom; he has returned to be spectator of a grand intrigue, which triumphed, but now serves him as a pretext for crying down his fellow-conspiratrix ; and it is his turn to try the trick of banish- ing an inconvenient accomplice. While native statesmen have been scrambling for power and pelf—while foreign diplomatists have been squabbling over etiquettes, and the semblance of national " independence "—not a single influence has been exerted to ad- vance good government and civilization, to consolidate, or rather to evoke, the real strength and independence of Spain. English statesmen are poring, like Laputans, over the treaty of Utrecht, to find in it Spanish independence; while they keep up the
paltry squabbles which distract the land and weaken the state. This it is to neglect substantial things for shadows.
