Year: 1873




vague or unsubstantial the report may seem.
Castelar's so-called government-his commit
! tee in possession at Madrid-has stood till
now, not because it had any element OF
strength in it-not because it had the consent
or respect or even the recognition OF the coun-
try, but because Of universal indifference
because those who might have tumbled it over
at any moment had no definite opinions or
purposes as to what they should put III It's
place, and waited with fatuous apathy the
drift of events But an occurrence like the
present difficulty with the United States would
naturally stir national impulse and could
easily gather at any point of opposition force
enough to overthrow an administration that
only awaited the jostle of hostile party to
fall by necessary gravity No one who knows
Spain needs to be told that the idea of setting
up republic in that country is farcical. 1t is
an idea entertained in Spain only by coterie
of dreamers, who believe that they can write
something ON q sheet of paper that will make
their country suddenly become like the United
States, and enable its people to COM
prehend self-government and give them
the self-restraint and moral dignity
that are necessary to act on its
conditions People with common sense
| scarcely require to be informed that an ig-
norant, degraded and depraved race, brutal
| lied by the bad rule of q thousand years, is
not to be changed between Christmas and
Easter by the vapid declaration that their
country is a republic. Yet CASTELAR, and his
4 ic ~ n1aar hafnra fbarp
have persisted in propaganda against the
nature of things and have not advanced re-
pubicanism in the least, but have brought their
country to lamentable condition With the
| Carlists in the north, the irreconcilables in
the south and the CASTELAR, government in the
middle, Spain was in a state of disintegration.
1t was decomposing very much in the same
lines in which its parts had had separate
existence in the days before the Moors
in the south, the Goths in the north
and the people of Roman and Cartha-
ginian origin in the middle, were COM
bined to form the Spanish nation. And
of the three divisions that were then struggling
for possession of the country, the one that
had no real party, that was simply an intrigue
and conspiracy, was the CASTELAR, division.
and it is this fact that has now cast him
| down.


1t is reported that combination has been
made strong enough to insure success that
will make Serrano regent to hold the throne
for young Alfonso the son of Isabella, in
whose favor his mother will abdicate. AL
fonso has long been looked upon as the only
candidate in whose favor any combination
could be made likely to secure an extensive
assent in the country. All the moderate
and conservative elements will support such
a candidacy, looking upon it as the only hope
for the restoration of tranquility and order.
Only the Carlists and the red republicans viii
oppose, and, with all the other elements united,
these can be put down and kept down, as they
have been in the past. 1t is now thoroughly safe
to say that, except the Carlists and the faction
of Communist republicans, all the political ele-
ments can be rallied to the support of AL
fonso. Where, then, is Castelar's party?
He has none. There is no party in Spain ac-
cepting or believing in republicanism as Cas-
telar understands it. He does not sympathize
with the only type of republican that -four
Isles III Spain, uuQ IL lS W Ills uDucE ludt ue
does not. The Spanish republican is man
who giories in the Commune as it was organ
lied in Paris He wants to cut the throats of
the arstocrats and plunder the rich mems
houses. These were the republicans who
swept Spain, the monarchists not voting in
the last election, giving an enormous majority
for federal republic; but CASTELAR, and his
IL. - = IL
which made the revolt in the southern cities
but though they defeated the federal republic,
they did not gain from the conservative or
moderate people support or party in lieu
of the party they lost in the republicans whom
they drove into revolt. Therefore they have
stood ever since as a governing coterie with
out party-without legitimate hold on the
sympathies or legitimate claim to the sup
port of any considerable portion of the people.
They have stood as an intrigue and con-
spiracy; for unless we go to the extreme of
the old monarchists and argue that there is a
republic by divine right, as they argue that
there is monarchy by divine right-unless
we deny popular sovereignty, we cannot un-
derstand a republic existing in defiance of the
will of the great majority of the people-nor
government which repudiates absolutely the
politics of the party in whose name it came
into power. 1t seems to US, therefore, only
natural result of its inherent weakness that
the CASTELAR, government should go down in
the first shock it was called upon to endure
Yesterday there was revival on the part of
our government of that eager preparation for
warike possibilities which had been discon-
tinued somewhat the day before, which re-
vival, coming swiftly upon the heels of the
Spanish news, may perhaps, be taken as the
Washington view Of the significance to us of