The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-07-24
From tho parkening Confusion OF
Spain . Brighteaing Prospect for


Cuba.
Is the experiment of republican institutions
in Spain destined to prove An ignominous
failure9 The ominous intelligence from that
distracted country-that the crews Of five OF
her choicest ships-of-war have mutinied
and gone over to the terrible Commune;
that the government has issued
proclamation denouncing those ships a.
pirates, and authorizing their capture and
treatment as such by any Power on the high
seas; that an English member of the Interna-
tonal brotherhood is in command of one of
the revolving vessels; that the government
has expelled from the public service Generals
Contreras and Pierrad and has removed the
civil governors of Cordova, Murcia, Ponteve-
drn, Leon and Orense; that another revolt
ing province has declared itself an independ-
emit canton; that the Carlist force Of five
thousand men, after sacking and burning the
city of Igualada, is encamped around its
ruins, preparatory, perhaps, to movement
upon Barcelona; that the authorities of
this, the second city Of the nation,
in anticipation of on attack, have Or
ganized q committee of safety; that the
mayor of o city has been slain in street fight,
and that the assassination of that distin-
guished public servant Marshal Serrano, has
been attempted in his city Of refuge, even
upon the soil of France-forms budget of
startling events which promises anything but a
speedy deliverance of the Republic in Spain
from its thickening embarrassments on every
side. Our special dispatches point to the i'm
minence Of the recognition of Don Carlos by
the French government, the restraining power
in this respect being more fear for the effect
of such q recognition on the French people
than want of sympathy tor the Bourbon cause
ALI the elements of state of anarchy are
observation-disclosures civil officers, a disafected
army, mutinous navy, revolving cities and
cities laid in ashes by armed bodies of insur-
gents, and rufianism, treachery, suspicion
and alarm everywhere in the general demoral-
ization. Since the conspiracy of the Prince
of Asturias against his father, in 1907, the pre-
vailing order of things in Spain has been
that of O state of war, from foreign invasions
or revolutionary factions; but never before
were the elements so broadly developed as
now for civil CONFUSION reaching to the bed
rock of her political institutions, souvenirs
and traditions. Down to the expulsion of
Isabella the civil conflicts of Spain were
simply the conflicts of rival claimants for the
crown, in which popular rights and popular
wrongs were only played upon by successive
demagogues to cheat the people. But with
the expulsion of Isabella there was revolu-
ton which signifed something more than the
removal of one Bourbon in order to elevate
another TO the family throne. 1t meant
something more than the expulsion of the
Bourbon family. Prim and Serrano thought
it called for the establishment of new royal
house, to Re founded upon the introduction
OF new king from the royal family of Ger
many, England or Italy. In searching for
this new king Prim inveigled Napoleon the
Third into his fatal war with Germany.
When the foreign gentleman desired was
found in the courageous Amadeus Of Italy
the advancement of the young Italian to the
Spanish throne was the death warrant of
Prim; and when at length, Disguised with
incessant intrigues and conspiracies against
his authority and his life, Amadeus threw up
his proftless commission and returned home,
there came with his retirement the proclama-
ton Of the end of the Monarchy and the
beginning of the Republic.
With Figueras and CASTELAR, as its chief en-
gineers, encouraged by the United States of
America and strengthened by the example of
France, it was thought for q time that the
Republic in Spain, by gradual departures
from the legacies of the Kingdom and by
careful approaches to popular sovereignty,
religious liberty and equal rights might be
permanently established. But the disturbing
forces which have since broken out, and the
darkening confusion, which, in the conflict Of
ideas-revolutionary and conservative-have
settled upon the country, seem to threaten to
poor Spain the feast of horrors Of the first
French Revolution, in which the landed
mobiles were dispossessed and butchered, in
which the Church was displaced by the God
dess of Reason, and 'tiberty, equality and
fraternity were proclaimed from day to
day in the hideous work of the guillotine.
The republican government at Madrid
fails to satisfy the extreme factions on any
side. It is too radical for the conservatives
and too conservative for the radicals. 1t
is too regardless of sacred things for the
Church and too considerate of the claims of the
Church for the International and the Com
mune. 1t is government which, despised by
the Bourbons, denounced by the Church
and suspected by the radicals, has only the
strength and the prestige of possession upon
which to stand. 1t may. nevertheless, still
battle and defeat all its enemies, but it may be
overthrown in day. It still might have been
strong enough against all opposition at home,
in the sinews of war; to maintain the loyalty
of the army and the navy but for the men
and money wasted in the vain effort to sup