Year: 1875

We trust the President will be little
careful how he allows Mr.. Fish to talk to
Spain. That country has lately received
reinforcement so important and powerful as
to make her formidable beyond, perhaps,
any other nation in Europe. Her new ally
is no less parsonage than the redoubtable
editor ofthe CroaiStd, the Spanish newspaper
published in New York Mr.. Ferrer de
Couto, seeing Spain in deep waters, fastened
over to Madrid some months ago and offered
his alliance to the Spanish government. Not
only his alliance, indeed, but his advice
the sum total Of his wisdom all he knows
about the condition of the wretched
country in which he edits q news
paper all he knows about the art of
war; about the arts of politics about
the management of national and interna-
tional affairs. Mr.. Ferrer de Couto, accord
ing to his own account of himself at a din
ner party which he gave last month in Mad
rid, we take to be kind of second edition of
Prince Bismarck, bound in calf. He seems
to have been, like the late Mr.. Pickens, of
South Carolina 'born insensible to fear"
He has had the remarkable shrewdness dur
ing his residence in New York to see through
that hollow and glittering fraud, the Ameri-
can Union and he kindly invited the jour
nalists and some of the officials of Madrid to
dine with him, IN order that he might make
them if possible, almost as wise as himself


Having invited these gentlemen to dine
with him it was but natural, perhaps, that
Mr.. de Couto should take up the greater part
of the evening with speech. His victims
appear, from the report before us in the
Madrid Potitico, to have listened with becom-
ing awe to their host On his part he evidently
meant to impress them with his knowledge,
power and general importance. He told
them that they could make no greater mis-
take than to imagine the United States
powerful nation. He gave a lamentable ac-
count of the vast.and distressing burden of
our debt-which we fear he cribbed from
campaign speech of Governor Tilden-of the
internal dissensions which threaten at any
moment to split us into three independent
and hostile nationalities-the East, the West
and the South of the poverty of our people
and the weakness of our feet, which, he
has discovered, contains only fifteen miser-
able iron-clads, not one of which dares
stick its bow outside of the mouth
of the river it haunts. Ho showed them
that the President cannot make war without
previously getting the unanimous consent of
the States, and he told them that Spain had
only to show she was not afraid to make this
great bully eat humble pie. A single article
of his own, in the Cronistd, had at one time,
he assured his audience, suddenly raised the
price of gold thirty-three per cent in New
York and affected disastrously the value of
not less than two hundred securities, and he
limited that in the sacred service of Spain he
would not scruple again to infict such
blow upon our finances. Finally he sug-
gested that negotiations were tedious and
that war was shorter method. "We," he
remarked meaning probably Spain plus
Mr.. Ferrer de Couto-"we could defend Cuba
without losing gun"


1t was hardly fair in Mr. de Couto thus
pitilessly to expose our weakness in
Madrid-where, we are convinced, the gen.
tlemen at the head of the Spanish govern
ment must nave Deen as mucn amazed at
his account of the United States and him
self as undoubtedly Mr.. Gushing was dis
tressed and humiliated. At last advices Mr..
de Couto had not assumed the command of
the feet to which-unless they are laughing
at him as a vainglorious meddler-the Span
ish government must have appointed him.
We advise the journalists of Madrid not to
rely too firmly on Mr.. de Couto. He is per-
haps, fluent after-dinner speaker but his
abilities as q statesman, n historian, or q
diplomatist rest on very slender founda-
tions. In fact, there are people over here
who laugh at him rs one who has not yet
learned to understand our very simple form
of government, and who is sometimes sus-
pected of desire for notoriety.


Cold Weather and Warm Religion.