FRANCE AND SPAIN.
The first cause is the financial. With the Cuban Deb to provide for as well as its own, the Spanish Treasn will be heavily overweighted. Its managers cannot eve now provide for pressing obligations like the arrears o pay to the Cuban troops ; they are borrowing mono almost incessantly to meet the monthly expenditure; and they owe to the National Bank, as well as to Paris, sums which, if a fatal crash is to be avoided, must be got to- gether. They cannot reduce the Army without releasing the elements of disorder ; they must restore the Navy to something like strength ; and they cannot, as the Turkish Government sometimes does, leave the civil administra- tion to pay itself the best way it can. If the Monarchy repudiates or scales the Debt it runs the risk of insurrec- tion, while it will alienate all the financiers, from whom it still hopes for aid sufficient at all events to postpone the evil day. The Monarchy will, we believe, for its own sake make every effort to be honest ; and must therefore either increase and reform taxation, a most dangerous enterprise in such a country, or seek abroad a large and continuous assistance, which can only come from France. The second alternative being the easier will, we cannot doubt, be the one adopted. France is rich enough to yield it, but will only yield it if her Government approves, and her Govern- ment will only approve if it obtains a control which for political purposes will erase the Pyrenees. France, if she is to support Spain through its time of trial, will claim her as a dependent ally, will dispose of her resources, and will insist that those resources be managed by Frenchmen, or Spaniards instructed by Frenchmen, so that French peasants may not fear to be deprived of their dividends. Control of that kind under the conditions of our modern world is very like annexation, and will undoubtedly attract the attention of all Europe, which for two hundred years has always watched w;th jealousy any prospect of union between France and. the great Southern peninsula with its magnificent resources.
(2) It is quite possible that recourse to France may be precipitated in another way. The great parties into which Spain is divided are waiting for the signature of the American Treaty, but the moment that is arranged, and Sefior Sagasta retires from the Premiership, the struggle between the Monarchists, the Carlists, the Liberals, and the Socialists will break out in a very deter- mined form. The Army, as a unit, may decide for either of the first three parties, and then the one it decides for will triumph, only to be confronted. with the financial difficulty ; but the Army may also divide, with an imminent danger of creating anarchy, amidst which one party or the other is certain to ask for help from France. France, moved by the financial consideration already pointed out, by ambition, and by the tradition of cen- turies, which makes of influence in Spain one of her per- manent objects, can hardly refuse interference, and if she interferes strongly for any party, must continue the in- terference to keep that party in possession of power. French statesmen will not make the mistake of Nicholas I. when he saved the Hapsburgs in expectation of their gratitude, but will claim in payment of their services either provinces or control. (3) Provinces ? That is impossible. Is it ? Quite impossible, we should say, if Spain is the homogeneous country she appeared to be during the war against Napoleon ; but there are people who deny that, and hold that there is a dangerous cleavage of sentiment between Northern and Southern Spain. The North is industrial, modern, sceptical; the South, agricultural, mediteval, and in sentiment, at all events, clerical or religious. The South, it is said, dislikes the North, as Englishmen once disliked Scotchmen ; while the North is enraged by its political position, which it sometimes defines as that of the mulch-cow of Southern Spain, paying all the taxes and earning all the wealth of the Peninsula in order that a Government which it does not appoint may expend them in holding its provinces together. It is quite possible that this discontent is exaggerated, as it has often been in other countries, being an expression, in fact, of mercantile, and not of popular, feeling; but it is certain that jealousy • of the South is one element in the strength of Carlism, and that there are men in North Spain who think that if Catalonia and Biscay were Republics under a French protectorate that position would have very great economic compensations. North Spain, they believe, under the shadow of France would be one of the richest, and there- fore, in their judgment, happiest, countries in the world. Already they are petitioning for a Constitution which would make of Spain a Federal kingdom, and claiming for their provinces an independent right of controlling commerce. The "Regions," ask the Catalonians, "shall enjoy complete administrative decentralisation. They shall be enabled to establish an economic convention ; to found institutes for technical education adapted to local needs ; to undertake the public works necessary for the speedy development of the public wealth; and they shall have the option of maintaining, or modifying, local dues."
And, finally, consider the position of France and the temperament of her people, so restless whenever they think themselves deprived of their due measure of glory and ascendency in the counsels of the world. Fettered on the German side, resisted, as they fancy, on the English side, unable to quarrel with Germany till Russia is ready, or with England until the Fleet has been re- organised, it is at least not unnatural that her states- men should, as their predecessors have done for centuries, look southwards for an outlet to their energies and a gratification to their ambition. Italy sleeps uneasily under the protection of the Triple Alliance, and cannot at present be attacked; but may not opportunities offer themselves in Spain ? Spain is separated from the rest of the world by France. There is always in Spain a strong party which admires French civilisation, is en- riched by French commerce, and would as soon be French as Spanish in legislation and social development. Above all, Spain is one of the richest countries in the world in natural resources, could hold pleasantly thirty millions of people and has barely seventeen, and appears to be—we do not say, with her history before us, she actually is— far weaker for defence than France. If those facts do not constitute a temptation to French statesmen, disposing as they do of two millions of soldiers, we have read European history in vain. The policy which attracted both the Bourbons and Napoleon must have its root in some permanent facts, and those facts seem to us just now to be unusually in evidence.
Previous page
