The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-05 00:00:00

SPAIN AND THE REV OLEn lON.

Not a stone is left unturned by the Revolu-
tionary
party in Europe to bring about a com-
motion in Spain. Their aim is to bring Spain
down to the level of Italy, and since the Queen
is identified with the cause of religion and
order, nothing less than her dethronement can
satisfy the disloyal conspirators. And who are
these conspirators ? Are they of the people
of Spain ? There is not a single man who
has the confidence of the people in their ranks.
Do they belong to the Grandees or to the Car-
lists ? There is not a name of note among

them, not a man of influence of Spanish birth.
The Church and the immense influence which
it justly exercises throughout Spain is not on
the side of a revolution as ungodly as it is un-
patriotic. Its only strength is in the army,
which has been for the last forty years the

constant instrument of revolution- in Spain.

Ambitious, disappointed, unprincipled soldiers
of fortune are the stuff out of which Spanish
revolutions arc manufactured. From Espartero
to Prim, a succession of military adventurers
has tortured unhappy Spain. The plague of a
lawless army is the malaise under which the
country suffers, and not, as the Duke of Mont-
pensier insinuates in his mischievous protest,
the rule of a Queen who knows how to support
religion and order if needs be with the sword
against foreign traitors and against native sol-
diers who ;have dishonoured the commission
they bear.
General Prim's abortive insurrection was a
purely military pronunciamiento. The people
had no share or sympathy with it. Soldiers
are bribed or induced to follow a General who

pretends that his object is to free the Queen
and country from a rival General who holds
both in unwilling thraldom ; his success de-
pends upon the number of dupes he may
secure among the military commanders. These
military revolts have been too successful in
upsetting a Alinistry, and in installing in power
and wealth and honours the leaders of such
plots, not to induce unprincipled and ambitions
Generals in the Spanish army to cast in their
lot • with any conspiracy which may be set on
foot. The late plot was one of this nature : a
few Generals who had influence over certain
regiments, a garrison in this town or that,
together with a certain number of the troops
in the Capitol, conspired to march upon Madrid
and declare the deposition of the Queen, and
in the alleged interests of the throne and
dynasty to proclaim the Prince of Asturias
King under the regency of the Duke and
Duchess of Montpensier. But the Govern-
ment, by seizing upon a half dozen generals,
and simply shipping them out of the country,
frustrated the plot. It had no substance apart
from these generals. On their arrest the con-
spiracy collapsed. There was no popular move-
ment—nothing to indicate that the nation had
heart or hand in the treacherous design of seiz-
ing upon the person of the Queen, and of
setting up a Prince of the House of Orleans
as virtual Regent of Spain. If the country
is suffering tinder a grave malaise, caused
according to the disloyal allegation of the Duke
of Montpensier by the misrule of the Queen,
why is there no expression of popular ill-will
at the failure of the plot of the six generals,
or still more, at the banishment from Spanish
soil of the aspiring Duke, kinsman of the
Queen, whom he was willing to betray. It
cannot be alleged that the nation is terror-
stricken, and dare not show sympathy with
the six generals who betrayed their Queen; for
never was there a plot of so treasonable a
character followed by so slight and con-
temptuous a punishment. No blood has been
shed, no terrorism exercised, and the Spanish
people, whom the half dozen conspirators and
the agents of the Rei, olutionary party in
Europe, declare to be ground to dust under
the foot of an ignominious tyranny, quietly
and carelessly acquiesce in the transportation
of its half dozen would-be deliverers. The
conspiracy, detected in time, has an ugly look
about it. it looks as if it were got up not by a
" tortured" people, to use again the Duke de
Montpensier's words, against a tyrannical Go-
vernment, but by a traitor army against their
Queen. It is a private plot, not a national
rising. Its leaders avowed or concealed are
not known or popular men, but half a dozen
perjured generals, and a foreign Duke.
Such being the facts of this latest Spanish
plot, the aim of the Revolutionary party is to
conceal its true character. Accordingly, ever
since its detection, the Revolutionary press has
spread by means of false telegrams and mis-
leading correspondence, the most alarming
intelligence of risings in this town, and bom-
bardments in the other, until hasty readers
were led. to believe that Spain, convulsed
by popular outbreaks, was on the eve of a ter-
rible catastrophe ; then followed a mysteri-
ous silence. The Spanish Government, it was
' alleged, in possession of terrible news, allowed
no report of the calamities which either had
already befallen or were impending over Spain,
to reach the outer world. At last it had to be
acknowledged that none of these supposed
horrors had come to pass. There had been no
towns bombarded, no risings in the country,
no burnings of churches, no manifestations of
ill-will against the Queen of Spain, no expres-
sions of sympathy with rebellious regiments.
It is now the tactics of the Revolutionary party
to say that if all these things have not taken
place they are on the eve of being accomplished;
that a " grave malaise" exists in the country,
caused by the Government ; that the Queen is
execrated by the mass of the people ; that they
are ripe for change, that is, for revolution
such as now rules in unhappy Italy. It is with
regret we see that the Paris correspondent of
the Times lends himself to this conspiracy
against truth. He cannot broadly deny, having,
more regard for facts than, more hardened ad-
herents of the Revolution, that wherever the
Queen goes in the country she is welcomed
with manifestations of fidelity and attach-
ment, but he insinuates that the hurrahs
and vivas, the eager crowds and lusty hand-
clapping, " are not genuine . expressions of
loyalty; but are supplied, doubtless, as in some
other countries unnecessary to.name, by " un-
dertakers" of enthusiasm, persons who pro-
vide triumphal arches, and laurel wreaths, and
loyal inscriptions in coloured lamps, and bands
of blushing virgins, clad in book muslin, and
bearing bouquets." The insinuation that the
enthusiasm which the people of Spain show
towards their Queen "doubtless" is " got up,"
is followed, as the writer warms with his topic,
by the ,broader assertion, that "if the Queen
meets applause when she drives abroad, it is
from hired clappers or servile Government de-
pendants. By the mass of the nation she is
despised and execrated, and deep is the regret
many feel that she was not expelled the coun-
try in 1854."
Here we have the full flavour of the revolu-
tion ; no longer insinuations, but the broad
statement, as a matter not of inference but of
fact, that the Queen of Spain is execrated by
the mass of the nation. We have no hesitation
in stating, on evidence capable of standing the
severest cross-examination,' that this allegation
is a calumny against the loyalty of the
people of Spain, a glaring misstatement of
a public fact patent to every man familiar
in the least with the actual state of things
in Spain. It is a falsehood industriously cir-
culated by the Revolution, and heedlessly re-
peated by a writer so inexact as the Paris cor-
respondent of the Times.
Whatever else may be called in question by
the Revolutionary press, which for years has
propagated the grossest calumnies against her,
this is true, that the Queen of Spain is beloved
as the friend of order and of religion—we do
not say by a clique of conspirators in the
army, or by a certain class in some of the
larger commercial cities, or by the secret socie-
ties—but by the mass of the people in every
order and rank of life in town and ,country.—
Westminster Gaeette.

There is a species of fir in the Sierra Nevada,
the gum from which, when distilled for turpentine, yields
a highly fragrant substance, having a balsamic odour
something like lemon peel. It possesses all the usual pro-
perties Of turpentine except the edour. ,