We print a letter from a correspondent who sends us
an extract from a speech by Senor Silvela.—who has recently quitted the Parliamentary arena after a long and active career—which has not, we think, before appeared in English. It is a terrible indictment of the Spanish nation by one of the most experienced politicians in it. It is, we believe, as regards the people, an unfair indictment, Seiler Silvela judging too entirely by the exhaustion of morale in the class to which he first of all looked for help. Nations do not go rotten like that, though a governing class did in the time of Louis XV. The speech is, however, worth reading by all who are interested in Spain, and specially by those who believe, as we do, and as the able Madrid correspondent of the Times evidently does, that Spain is on the brink of a revolution as thoroughgoing as that which broke up the old institutions of France. The special danger is that in the clebdcle the unity of Spain may be endangered. The people are still provincial patriots before all.
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