, 1874-05-09

were destined to be the Victim or chronic clVH
war. And yet she is full of cities, full of men,
full of enthusiasts who will die for a cause. and
they all are, for this purpose, fairly united and
at one. Don Carlos, supposed in England to
be victorious, has not one city, not one pro-
vince in the plain, not one ship above the d.
mansions of a Yacht. 1t is as certain as any
thing can be that his t'army' would not follow
him out of the hills, that his Generals would
fail in the plain, that long before he reached Ma
drid all Spain would be in in>urrection to pre-
vent a victory the people could not bear. And
yet this same people will do nothing, and has
done nothing, for the leaders who are trying to
work its will, and whom it does not oppose.
There is universal want ofheart, deafness every
where, as there was in England during l745.
The country produces no chiefs except Caste
lar, who was overthrow by a blow from the
military power, the author of which blow, Gen
eral Pavia, seems to have for the time neither
wish, nor ambition, nor capacity for immediate
action. There is a dictatorship which dictates
nothing, an absolute power which controls no.
thing, a popular spirit which produces nothing
not even a second mad postman to blow up a
fort, In England it is settled that Spaniards
are either towards or that Spain is exhausted,
but where is the evidence for either theory?
Spaniards m let death when excited IS readily
as any people in the world, and have repeated
ly in our own day supplied an infantry second
to none in the South of Europe. So far from
being impoverished, they are exceedingly rich,
owning. it is probable, more property, though
wealth is badly distributed, than any people
Of the same number 10 Southern Europe. SO
far from being exhausted by taxation, they are
almost literally u~ntaxed, a small contribution
on transfers, a salt tax, and an impost on i'm
ported goods, being literally all they are COM
~-lC,wt1, AI - ,-1 G. 80 n hn
ing extravaganza, they never spent in their best
time five millions on the Army and two on the
Navy, while the Debt is for the moment un.
paid, aud the Civil servants and Curas left to
live as they best can. What prevents
their exerting something like force |? What
prevents SerranO, for instance, from
gathering a hundred thousand men, or
Echergaray from taxing the people to the
quick, or CASTELAR, from declaring all land the
property of the State to be held by the pea
SAINTS in perpetuity, at SIS. each cultivated acre?
Revolutionary power seems to have gone out of
the people as much as the capacity for govern
ing has gone out of the rulers, till a country
which only the other day claimed, after the
war in Morocco, to be a Sixth Power, shivers
because a few mountain curas and their focks
dare still to fight pretty hard for an idea. The
strongest despotism 10 Spain seems afraid Of a
new tax. The strongest mob does nothing but
exhaust the city it defends. The strongest
statesman contents himself with advising Re-
publicans that Republics cannot be founded in
a day. The weakness is not due to any form
of government, for it has been apparent under
Prim, under Amadeo, under the Republic, and
under the Dictatorship almost equally. Nobo-
dy resisted Prim, but Prim could never get the
gabelle into the Treasury in cash. Nobody re.
Sists Syrrano, yet SerrauO is at bis wits end to
equip his batteries, and would sell half Spain if
only he could thereby raise a real revenue of
few millions a year.
The only explanation we can think of is the
old one, that the Spaniards still look for leaders
to a class which has become effete, has lost it's
originality, and is in action singularly timid;
but that only pushes the question a step back
ward. Why have they lost the power of throw
ing up a new governing castel That, as it
seems to US, is the question for Spain, and We =
can only answer it by supposing that Spain is
passing through one of those periods in a IA
tion's life which do ultimately evolve order.
The reign of Louis XIV. in France just covered
such a period, and it was only by the accident
al fact that the Monarchy still stood that the
powerlessness of France was not revealed like
the powerlessness of Spain.
mCOEpNTVEn LEGISLATION FOR IRE