At this dull season, the long vacation of legislators, when French deputies and English members, weary of bills and debates, motions and amendments, take their autumnal ramble, or range their well-stocked preserves, and when newspapers are at their wits' end for subjects of discussion, a topic like the Spanish marriages, intrinsically so important, in arrival so opportune, has naturally monopolised the attention of the daily press. For some time previously, the English public had paid little attention to Spanish affairs. Men were weary of watching the constant changes, the shameless corruption, the scandalous intrigues, from which that unfortunate country and its unquiet population have so long suffered; they had ceased in great measure to follow the thread of Peninsular politics. The arbitrary and unconstitutional influences employed at the last elections, and the tyranny exercised towards the press, deprived foreigners of the most important data whence to judge the real state of public feeling and opinion south of the Pyrenees. The debates of Cortes elected under circumstances of flagrant intimidation, and whose members, almost to a man, were creatures of a _Camarilla_, were no guide to the sentiments of a nation: journalists, sorely persecuted, writing in terror of bayonets, in peril of ruinous fine and arbitrary imprisonment, dared not speak the voice of truth, and feared to echo the wishes and indignation of the vast but soldier-ridden majority of their countrymen. Thus, without free papers or fair debates to guide them, foreigners could attain but an imperfect perception of the state of Spanish affairs. The view obtained was vague--the outline faint and broken--details were wanting. Hence the Spanish marriages, although so much has been written about them, have in England been but partially understood. Much indignation and censure have been expended upon those who achieved them; many conjectures have been hazarded as to their proximate and remote consequences; but one very curious point has barely been glanced at. Scarcely an attempt has been made to investigate the singular state of parties, and strange concurrence of circumstances, that have enabled a few score persons to overbalance the will of a nation. How is it that a people, once so great and powerful, still so easy to rouse, and jealous of its independence, has suffered itself to be fooled by an abandoned Italian woman, and a wily and unscrupulous foreign potentate--by a corrupt _Camarilla_, and a party that is but a name? How is it that Spain has thus unresistingly beheld the consummation of an alliance so odious to her children, and against which, from Portugal to the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar's straits to Cantabria's coast, but one opinion is held, but one voice heard--a voice of reprobation and aggrieved nationality?