It seems that Loins PHILIPPE has withdrawn from his absurd
and dangerous Spanish intrigue. Proceedings of the kind were of too underhand a nature to be distinctly avowed, or even distinctly exposed by hostile parties before their consummation. There ap- pears to be no reason, however, to doubt that the charges against him were upon the whole well-founded : they were supported by much concurrent evidence ; and the advocacy of his organs served to confirm the accusation. So, likewise, his retractation has not been explicit ; but we learn through the veil of diplomacy, that he has failed to procure among the Northern European Powers the sup- port upon which he reckoned in opposing England—that the utter
failure of the revolt in Spain has been followed by a more concilia- tory bearing on his part towards the representative of that country ; and it is to observed that at the same time the Ministerial pa-
pers, from abusing ESPARTERO, turn to praising him. The shout of execration which greeted the discovery of Louts PHILIPPE'S
schemes in Madrid, the unanimous burst of indignation from all parties in England, (the " alien " exception of O'CONNELL in Ire- land only proving the rule ) coupled with the absence of all coun- tenance on the side of the Legitimists of North-eastern Europe, may well have deterred the selfish schemer from his purpose.
In the mean time, the cause of order prospers in Spain. ESPAR- TERo has displayed an unexpected degree of energy, with not less than his usual caution. The revolt in Madrid has been crushed; its promoters have been punished with a severity so tempered as to strike terror without exciting sympathy for the criminals. Except by bigoted enemies, the fate of the hardy adventurers who staked life and character, and lost both, is ascribed not to ESPARTERO, who wields the sword of justice, but to CHRISTINA, who instigated the crime. That moral success is not one of the least which has distinguished the Regent in the course of the struggle. He has driven the revolters from the provinces, without hope of return. It was a bold, but, as the event has proved, a discreet stroke of policy, to choose the very close of the revolt as the time to deprive the disaffected provinces of some popular though perhaps injurious local privileges : that policy has been crowned with complete suc- cess, and the abolition of the Fueros, which almost helped to lead to the revolt, has been consummated after the revolt without a hand held up in their defence. Spain rises front the contest, therefore, with a more consolidated territory, and some of the worst obstacles to further improvement removed. And finally, the em- barrassing zealotry of the Ultra-Liberals in Catalonia and Valencia has been subdued, without raising that secondary revolt which threatened to be more difficult of treatment by a Liberal Govern- ment than all the intrigues of Christinos and Carlists. With revolutionary Barcelona ESPARTERO behaved as a skilful angler does with a trout, giving it play in the first instance, in order to land it without breaking his tackle at the last. Imaginative poli- ticians may fear that so much success over all adverse circum- stances must over-stimulate the ambition of the military Regent. But so intelligent a man as ESPARTERO can scarcely fail to see, that, although independent of any one foreign power—of England, who has no wish to make him otherwise, as well as of Russia, Austria, or France—his whole strength subsists by the sufferance of the universal public opinion of Europe. In his late successes he has got no start of the world : he has proved himself equal to the emergency ; he has avoided failure where failure would have been the ready pretext for his destruction ; and if his position is strengthened, it is less because he has gained any positive advantage than because he has survived a fierce ordeal : but he has acquired no such internal strength as could render him independent of European opinion; once let him violate that, and his power topples down never to rise again. It is only so long as he satisfies that opinion that he will continue to be what he really is, its instrument in Spain.
