The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-01 00:00:00

would have liked to have held Flanders and Pori.
tugal, but he never pretended that he did this be-
cause he had a special regard for the Flemish or
the Portuguese people; hie right, he would have
told you, lay in the power of the sword and pro-
scription ; in his days of supremacy he was not an
assimilator, but a conqueror. A Frenchman, con•
sequently, may expect tar more sympathy from the
quick-witted Italian than from the graver inhabi-
tant of the Peninsula. But it must not be thought
that this is owing to inferiority of intelligence upon
the part of the Spaniard ; on the contrary, if humour
is to be placed above wit—end the first place will
always be assigned to it by delicacy of taste—there
is nothing more truly humourous than the best
productions of Spanish literature. Not only are the
characters of the French and Spanish nations essen-
tially different—one representing Attic smartness,
the other Spartan gravity—but the events of hiss,
tory have also established between them a distinc-
tion that seems to be ineffaceable, an a.ieuation
which threatens to be permanent. M. Villemot has
the candour to acknowledge that the undying hatred
of the Spanish people is inspired by recollections
of the first French Empire. This is unquestionably
true, but we may go a little deeper. We may look
upon the circumstance that the crowns of France
and Spain are at present worn by Sovereigns of
rival dynasties as purely fortuitous. Certainly
this accident of itself would not tend to promote
good feeling between the respective Governments,
but for the purposes of administration, and from
motives of policy, this sort of difficultiesis not
formidable. That which arises from the in-
herent and mutual dislike of the two nations is
more serious. Both of them are branches of the
Latin family, and for a long time the contest
between them for pre-eminence was scarcely de-
cid-ed. An epoch arrived in which victory was un-
mistakably upon the side of Spain, but her triumph
was short-lived, as sovereignty soon passed over to
her detested rival. We have here at once an element
of Peninsular hatred, quickened naturally by the
gross excesses of the first Napoleon's marshals and
the armies under their command. It was not merely
that the victors of Pavia and St. Quentin had lost
the supremacy of the Latin name, although that
reflection must to Castilian pride have been almost
insupportable, but that those to whom they had
once given law now trampled them into the dust.
Instead of peace being dictated under the walls of
Paris, Madrid had become a French city. It is a
well-attested fact in history that the nearer in blood
two nations are the more bitter is their conflict. We
have not to go back to ancient history to find ex-
amples of this : the relations that existed between
Athens and the lonians existed also between the
rival chieftains of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands.
exist now between the contending sections of
America. Thus, the very fact that both the French•
man and the Spaniard claimed a Latin parentage
was a sure omen that their struggle would be the
more deadly; it in some degree accounts for the
cruelties perpetrated by the French soldiery. For
it must be remembered that the great Revolution,
when it inverted the face of French society, brought
the Latin element of the nation upwards, whilst the
Norman-Frank was comparatively depressed. Asa
suredly much of the outrage committed by the
French armies in Spain is to be ascribed to their
unbounded habits of licence; but even this reason
does not satisfactorily explain why English and.
Spanish prisoners were treated with so marked a
distinction by a French captor. Having already
this cause of hatred existing, wo may guess if the
Spanish people would be pleased by the part which
France took in the revivification of Italy, a third
member of the Latin family. Religion, indeed.
would make a Spaniard regard with horror the
spoliation of the Papal dominions ; but independ-
ently of this, political feeling would have its weight
With him. It is not enough, he would think, that
I am no longer the leader of the Latin name, but
there is also to be raised up a third Power, whom I
used to treat as a makeweight in the family, and
that Power likely to be a naval one, menacing both
my imperial and commercial interests. It is as real
amiable to expect that Spain can ever entertain cora
dial sympathy for either France or Italy, as they
aro at present constituted, as it would be toimagine
that an old Argive would under any circumstances
have consented without the most envenomed jeal-
ousy and hostility to the transfer of the Derma
sceptre from Argos to Lacedmmon. We have not
dwelt upon this subject because we rejoice in the
division of the various members composing the great
Latin family, but because it expresses a historical
truth which the modern nationalist would do well,
to study. There can be no question that M. Ville-
mot is justified in admitting without dispute the
dislike borne by the Spanish people towards France,
We have followed him the more readily in diseusss
log the question because this dislike does not seem
to us to be founded upon special grounds only, but,
like most other problems of history, to be capable of
generalisation.