The Sun.
London, England, 1833-10-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A Royal ordinance, which appears in the
Moniteur of Monday, for calling into active
service 35,000 new conscripts, or one-half of the
contingent of 70,000 men of the class of 1832,
has given occasion to a world of ingenious con-
jectures, and to much profound political specu-
lation. The obvious reasons alleged for the
measure in the report of the Minister of War,
on which the ordinance affects to be founded,—
namely, the expediency of supplying the vacan-
cies to be created by the anticipated discharge
of the class of 1825, and by the delivery of
unlimited furloughs to other parts of the army—
are charitably declared to be mere pretexts to
cover some projects of ambition, or some appre-
hensions of danger which the French Govern-
ment dare not openly avow. The statement, in
fact, is too plain and simple to be trusted by
such suspicious and warlike politicians, who,
with the Royal ordinance and the conscription
lists in their hands, look towards the Rhine or
the Pyrenees for the march of French armies of
defence or aggression. There can be no doubt
that France has prepared, or is preparing, for
all contingencies in the latter quarter ; and that
if the conscription of 1832 adverted to is ne-
cessary for completing the ranks of her army
for any immediate purpose, the present crisis
in Spanish affairs, and the effect which it
must produce on the great Powers of Europe,
may reaeogibly he assigned as the chief, if not
the only,,,se of this new levy. The Govern-
ment of Louis Philip, according to the demi-
official announcement of the Moniteur, and the
official declarations to its allies, has recognized
the title of the Infant Queen, the daughter of
Ferdinand, Isabella II , to the crown of Spain ;
and this recognition, which is not of an ordinary
kind, the French Monarch is bound, from mo-
tives of self-preservation, to maintain, as the
throne of her Infant Majesty can only be over-
turned by the triumph of those principles, and
the success of that party, which might endanger
his own. Though, therefore, we are decided
enemies to all foreign interference in the affairs
of independent states, either for supporting or
changing dynasties or constitutions, we can easily
admit that the present Government of France
has such a near and direct interest in the events
which may lead to a final settlement of the Spa-
nish succession, as to warrant extensive precau-
tionary measures, and great military preparations.
If Bourmont, having failed in Portugal, should
offer his Marshal's baton to Don Carlos, and
place himself at the head of the Apostolical fac-
tion to attack the rights of the young Queen,
who does not see that the cause of La Vendee
and of the Spanish convents, of the monarchy
of the barricades and of the daughter of Ferdi-
nand, would be identified ? But even though
there should be no direct interference of French
rebel subjects in Spanish dissensions, the French
Government could not remain a calm spectator
of a contest in which its own relations
with Spain, and the principles of its own exist-
ence, are so deeply involved. Spain must
always be an object of peculiar interest to
France, from its geographical position, its poli-
tical relations, and commercial resources. They
have been united for more than a century, under
the family compact of their Sovereigns—they
have been joined in many defensive and offen-
sive alliances--they have lost armies and fleets
or gained victories in a common cause, and theit
trailing intercourse is considerable, with the
certainty of an immense increase under a liberal
Administration. From their immediate vii inity,
the establishment of a Constitutional Govern-
ment in the one would derive strength from its
extension to the other; and the possession of
the colony of Algiers by the French (if Algiers
is really to he colonized) would render more
necessary than ever a facility of communication
with the Baleaiic Islands and the Mediterranean
coast of the Peninsula. These circumstances,
it is true, furnish no justification to France for
a direct interference with the present question of
the Spanish succession, much less do they war-
rant any dictation as to changes in the Spanish
constitution ; but they place France in a posi-
tion different from that of all other states, in
regard to Spanish affairs. England, if her own
views did not correspond with those of her
constitutional ally in relation to the present con-
test, would have a right to remonstrate, as she
did in 1822, against any military intervention
(which we trust will not be thought necessary,
and against which we enter our protest by anti-
cipation), but the Holy Alliance despots, who
compelled Louis XVIII., in 1823, to send the
gallant Dauphin with 100,000 French bayonets
to overturn the Government of the Cortes, could
not find a word to say. If they could authorize
an invading force to overthrow an existing Govern-
ment, they could not consistently object to an
expedition for the purpose of maintaining one.
But it is most likely that a cordon sanitaire—
of the Bourbon kind—on the Pyrenees will pre-
vent the necessity of passing them, and that Don
Carlos, by refusing his rebel commission to
Bourmont, will remove the great pretext or
justification of French interference. That Don
Carlos himself formerly meant, or still intends,
to disturb the arrangements of his late brother,
and to dispute the succession of his niece, there
can be no doubt, from his persevering refusal to
take the oath of allegiance to the young Queen,
and his lingering stay on the frontiers of Spain,
after he had promised to retire into Italy, where
his father died. It is difficult, indeed, for one
who has been on the very steps of a throne to
surrender the chance of mounting it, and we
ars not, therefore, surprised at the obstinate
,disloyalty of Don Carlos ; but we own that we
have been a good deal struck at hearing that there
are persons in this country (not Conservatives)
who think his title better than that of his niece,
and who on that ground disapprove of the
French and English Governments for recog-
nising the accession of the latter. Prejudice
apart, the point would be easily disposed of.
By the ancient laws of Spain, by the constitu-
tl9n of the Spanish monarchy from time imme-
morial, females were capable of inheriting the
Crown as well as males, in the absence of the
utter, among the children of the deceased So-
vereign, We need mention no other instance
than that of Isabella, the patroness of Columbus,
and the grandmother of the Emperor Charles
V., who brought her husband Ferdinand the
dowry of a kingdom. With the Bourbon
dynasty the salic law, established in France for
the exclusion of females from the succession,
passed into Spain. That law continued to exist
frum the time of Philip V., who introduced it,
to Charles IV., though, from the peculiar cir-
cumstances of the Royal Family, it was never
put into execution. The latter Monarch, in
1789, apprehensive that his son Ferdinand
might not survive him, and that he might have
only daughters to succeed „him, called the
Cortesr)icg a body of the nobility, derg)z
and representatives of towns, and procured

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