NORTH AFRICAN POLITICS.
FRANCE has gone to war with Morocco, alleging that Morocco has not only given shelter to ABD-EL-KADER, but supplied him with troops and munitions of war wherewith to harass the frontiers of Algeria and prolong the resistance of the Kabyles in the interior.
Spain has made threatening demonstrations against Morocco, alleging that no redress can be obtained for injuries committed in Morocco on the persons and properties of Spanish subjects. It is of great importance for Spain to keep a check on the overbearing and fickle inhabitants of Morocco ; for the Canaries and Southern parts of Spain have considerable traffic with them, and the fisheries on the coast of Africa are probably the best-conducted and most profitable branch of industry in the Canaries.
That the French and Spanish demonstrations against Morocco are simultaneous, could scarcely be avoided, seeing that the aggres- sions which are said to have provoked them were simultaneous. The coincidence in time may be the result of secret preconcert ; but of this there is no evidence beyond the suspicions of an organ of Lord PALMERSTON, who makes the assumed complicity of France and Spain a ground of crimination of Lord ABERDEEN. Even on the assumption that NARVAEZ is a mere creature of Louts PHILIPPE, it does not appear that an English Minister is to be blamed for allowing NARVAEZ to assume the reins of government in Spain, or that England is in a worse position because he has done so. The friends and followers of ESPARTERO themselves confessed that his deposition was effected by a Spanish movement ; that the Eng- lish Government had neither the right nor the power to prevent it. The government of NARVAEZ is a necessity which England could not control. And as to the designs of France on Africa, impo- verished and distracted Spain could do nothing to arrest them, and can do nothing to promote them. If Lours PHILIPPE has really by bribes and intrigues gained the present rulers of Spain to play his game in Africa, be has only complicated and encumbered his political machinery by the addition of a useless member. An alliance gained not by national sympathies but by court intrigue is always precarious, and a source rather of embarrassment than strength. So, even if there were truth in the dreams of Spanish and French plots, England isolated and uncompromised might await their de- nouement with perfect tranquillity.
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