NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE news from Spain is growing more and more ominous of anarchy. Early in the week we had been informed that General Velarde, like General Contreras, had been so thwarted in lis attempts to restore order to the disorganised army, that he -was on the eve of resignation. Then, the retirement, for a few days at least, of Senor Figueras, who has lost his wife, appears to have hastened the collision between the Govern- ment, with Senor Castelar at their head, and the Permanent Committee of the National Assembly. The Permanent Com- mittee accuse the Government of wishing to get rid of the check they put upon the proceedings of the Administration ; and the Government accuse the Permanent Committee of exciting a revolt amongst the Monarchical Volunteers against the Government. The Government state that eleven battalions of the old Monarchical Volunteers had assembled in the Bull Ring and had fired on General Contreras, and that these Volunteers openly identified themselves with the Permanent Committee of the Assembly. The result was that the Committee declared their sitting as 'permanent' as themselves, and refused to dissolve, whereupon the Government in a decree issued on Thursday ordered their dissolution, on the ground of their "unjustifiable pretensions to bring about a conflict, without taking notice of the direct part taken by some of their members in that conflict," and declared themselves responsible to the Constituent Corte s for the order. The Perma- nent Committee was dispersed by fear of the mob who sided with the Government. In fact, Madrid is now in revolution ; and the news from Barcelona is also of a revolutionary flavour. The masons on strike have organised themselves into bands, with which they parade the streets on behalf of the International ; and military discipline in Catalonia, which General Velarde had made a good beginning at reorganising, seems to have fallen back into its old chaos. However, the Federal Government will find that it cannot rule by virtue of Republican or any other mere ideas. If it keeps no force behind the ideas, it will soon be dissipated into air. Lamartine's experiment in Paris in 1848 on the power of beautiful sentiment to rule States, was not an encouraging one.
