The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC, JOURNALS.

• -..- .
The Saturday Review holds that the Go;i,ernmint in
Spain has not been by any means wholly bad for practical
purposes during the last two or three years. Order has
been maintained, there has been an attempt—a poor at-
tempt, indeed, but still an attempt—to restore the national
credit, and some slight disposition has been evinced to
push on public works. The Government has been in all
essential points exactly the same Government as that
which exists at Rome ; and if such a Government is sue-
cessfully imposed on a people it will occasionally try, in a
languid and capricious way, to benefit them. But the
difficulty of the rule of an extreme faction is that it must
be perpetually securing itself against every other party.
What has brought on the revolution is that the Queen has
thrown herself into the power of an exclusive and extreme
faction, who have warred so fiercely against all that dif-
fered from them that they have gradually made and con-
solidated a power which promises to be too strong for
them. The success of the revolution and the continuance
of the reign of the Queen are quite incompatible, and this
seems to have been the immediate conclusion at which she
herself and everyone else arrived. Whether there is

any truth in the report that she offered to abdicate
in favour of her son no one here can pretend to
say, but it is a very natural thought to have
occurred to her. But, then, is such a solution of the
difficulty possible ? It would be extremely advantageous
. . . .

to avoidachange of dynasty ; but the Prince of Asturias
is a boy, and the real government of the country must be
in the Regency if he were made King. This, however, is
not where the real difficulty lies. It would be hard to find
the right Regent, but it might possibly be done. But
what are to be the relations of the young King to his
family? Is he never to see his mother or her husband;
never to see his brothers and sisters ; never to talk to the
Countess Girgenti and her husband? If he is cut off from
his family, then it seems almost as harsh and violent a
change as to call in a new dynasty ; and if he is to see his
family, then they, and not the Ministers of the Crown,
will govern. The elevation of the Duke and Duchess of
Montpensier to the Throne would be by far the best end
of the revolution, if it were possible. But it would be
very invidious for one sister to profit by the disasters
of another ; and the Emperor of the French would
strenuously oppose die selection of an Orleans prince as
sovereign in a country so near him. It is very much to be
lamented that, in an era when sovereigns are so constantly
wanted by all kinds of countries, a royal family so
capable of furnishing ab'e and liberal kings as that of the
sons and grandsons of Louis Philippe should be excluded.
But the dynasty of the Napoleons is so insecure that it
cannot be expected that the Emperor should be desirous to
remind the world that there are other Frenchmen fit for
sovereignty besides the amiable child whom he is bringing
up to grace, if not to wear, a crown. Thus, a Spanish
revolution must be a revolution to get rid of the Bourbons,
or it is nothing. The Saturday Review believes that a
republic, if established, would soon come to an end.
Speculation of the chances of the success of the revolution
is at present useless. The Spaniards will shrink from
letting the Crown go begging, and will writhe under the
thought that the French will have a practical veto on
their choice. A great and decisive victory for the Queen's
troops might end the revolution, but this does not seem
probable. It will be more difficult to get the Bourbons
out of Spain than out of Italy, and a revolution merely to
create a vacancy does not look a promising one.
The London Review commences a leader by quoting the
" Infernal Marriage " " I must confess lam perfectly
satisfied whenever I remember that I have the queen on
any side." So says the philosopher in Mr. Disraeli's story
.when he turns up a queen in playing whist with Proser-
pine. Why does a reader of the " Infernal Marriage"
smile or wince as he meets this chance allusion? M. do
Montalembeit recently wrote a vivacious and searching
brochure on the future of England. He criticised many
things, and doubted not a few. He particularly discussed
the probability of English democracy being interfered
with by the peers, a danger of which we know something,
to which we are accustomed, which we know how to
bear with for a time, and how to overcome when we
lose patience with it. But Count Montalembert did
not say a word of any possible danger in the direction
of royal opinion or royal obstinacy. He thought we
had changed all that for ever. Have we done this ?
Not perhaps so thoroughly that a daring and capable
Minister need despair of reviving, if not the personal
government, at least the personal resistance of the Crown.
Mr. Disraeli thinks the present moment a favourable one
for varying his means of attaining the one end—power
over his fellows—which it is worth a great man's while to
pursue. He believes, as of old, that those who understand
the past are very well qualified to predict the future ; and
he does not understand the past of England in a democratic
sense. He knows how recently and how imperfectly the
idea that a king may have a will of his own has died out of
the English mind. He knows also, from the correspon-
dence of William IV. and from other sources, how easily
and naturally in past days the interference of the Crown
hasbeen concealed from the public. Unless he is greatly mis-
judged, he has evolved from these and other considerations
the idea of playing off the Queen against the people.
Mr. Bright used to impress on popular assemblies his con-
viction that the Queen was in favour of an extension of
the suffrage. Lord Derby has insisted that her Majesty
would do well to refuse her assent to the Suspensory Bill ;
and it is at this moment gravely discussed whether or no het
Majesty will refuse her assent to Mr. Gladstone's policy.
Mr. Disraeli is a favourite at Court, and it is said that
some important members of the Royal Family are his enthu-
siastic partisans. The best hope lies in the character of the
Queen, who has strong common sense, who, although she
has lost her best advisers, her uncle and husband, has
yet been constitutionally educated by them. The theory
of the sanctity of the Queen's oath would establish the
Church as co-ordinate with the Crown, and would render
us the only European nation debarred from legislating on
ecclesiastical subjects. Now, the London Review con-
cludes that the fear of the Queen's interference will not
intimidate a single member of Mr. Gladstone's majority,
and if Mr. Disraeli seek to gain an advantage by preeini-
tating his sovereign into a quarrel with her people, he will
seek in vain.

The Imperial Review thinks it would be a strange result,
indeed, should it turn out that, after having rejected
various Reform Bills—now on the plea that tliey gave-too
much influence to the multitude, and now that they left
too much in the bands of wealth and position—we have
accepted a measure which will prove to have conceded
excessive power to each. Yet there are not wanting
thoughtful men who maintain that, in trying to steer clear
of two evils, we have delivered ourselves up to both. The
imagination of the ancient poet never pictured to itself, at
worst, anything more alarming than a bump against
Scylla, arising out of an exorbitant dread of Charybdis.
The modern politician has seen himself bandied alter-
nately from one to the other. We are not quite
sure that a still more terrible fate even than that
is not in store for us. Such, at any rate, is
possible, should Democracy and Plutocracy coalesce.
Scylla and Charybdis may, peradventure, close upon us.
From such a coalition we can conceive no exit whatso-
ever. Rational government would expire in their embrace.
The balance of power is, for the practical mind, a ques-
tion of internal and national, just as much as of external
an international importance. In other words, what the
popular orator calls the war of class against class, and the
patient observer the natural and inevitable clash of con-
flicting interests, is the very foundation of political science.
The improvement upon this, it would seem, is to divide
a country into two opposing armies, as a preliminary to
getting rid of one of them, in order that "Universal
Peace" may, as we can well understand it for a short time
would,

" Lie like a shaft of light across the land."

Whether in the language of a greater poet, greedy dark
ness would not speedily devour it up, might, to the
timid political mind, be a matter of grave speculation.
For the moment, however, the simplifyingoan doctrines of
ardent positivists are in the ascendant, as a natural
consequence, there is the risk of
scrtnardtly eliminating. all
the elements of disagreement, Phis privi-
leged couple, of whose differences the 'rveos.t of us are to
be but spectators, and perhaps victims,
ofextremely
poor eeilormously
rich individuals, and an enormously big
poor ones. If you get at the real mind of anyrac
l
p eal
politician at this particular juncture, you find that,ch
as he may dislike mere wealth and all its Protean formsml
of
wrongful influence—in plain statutory language, of bribery
and corruption—he hesitates to deal a blow at it, lest
in doing so he may bring down the last, if the
rotten, support of Government and order. The
person who does not already know -this to be the
case, either has not followed the recent temper of
the House of Commons, and the more influential por-
tion of the press, or has wholly failed to comprehend it.
As yet, popularity may, and wealth certainly will, at any
moment make a man a representative of the nation. The
time is perhaps coming when both these eminent quali-
fications will be required. And yet we have been striving
to elude the dangers incident to each ! Perhaps we set
before ourselves an impossible problem. What wonder if
we are reduced to the absurd ? England has been said
not to love coalitions. Yet she may have to endure one
that she would love least of all—a coalition between the
richest members of the community and the p of the
constituencies. Extremes would then, int!ee !, have met.
As wc said, Scylla and Charybdis v wild Lave eloscd up, 11

The ,To Durl pays: After a lengeLy triaT,f r the zccont
time, INiadame Rachel has been found guilty of the frauds
charge:l against her, and sentenced to five years' penal
servivile. The Western Morn ing Ne (.ne of the
shrewdest of our journals, writing before the verdict,
says, " 2,ladame Rachel may not be worthy of much
sympathy, but she deserves some pity." We endorse
this opinion, for it seems to us evident that the case has
been the triumph of prejudice. If she was guilty of the
frauds charged, she would richly merit the punishment,
but for that very reason it is the more desirable that the
:ase should have been clearly established. The jury, no
doubt, meant well. They desired to condemn folly, fraud,
tad what they believed to be immorality. But it is a
Rangerous doctrine to hold that, without sufficient legal
proof, a person may be condemned on the evidence of so
:oolisu, if not, as some think, insane a person, as Mrs.
ijprodigit%