In presence of their Catalonian anxieties, of Cabrera's rapidly
increasing strength, and of the impotence of Christino generals, who
start for the insurgent districts with premature vaunts of their
triumphs, and return to Madrid, baffled and crestfallen, to wrangle
in the senate and divulge state secrets--the Narvaez government
is secretly most anxious to make up its differences with England.
This anxiety has been made sufficiently manifest by the recent
discussions in the Cortes. Notwithstanding his assumed indifference
and vain-glorious self-gratulation, the Duke of Valencia would
gladly give a year's salary, perquisites, and plunder, to recall
the impolitic act by which a British envoy was expelled the Spanish
capital. Señor Cortina, the Progresista deputy, after denying that
there were sufficient grounds for Sir Henry Bulwer's dismissal,
and lamenting the rupture that has been its consequence, politely
advised Narvaez to resign office, as almost the only means of
repairing the dangerous breach. The recommendation, of course,
was purely ironical. General Narvaez is the last man to play the
Curtius, and plunge, for his country's sake, into the gulf of
political extinction. In his scale of patriotism, the good of Spain
is secondary to the advantage of Ramon Narvaez. We can imagine the
broad grins of the Opposition, and the suppressed titter of his own
friends, upon his having the face to declare, that, when the French
Revolution broke out, he was actually planning a transfer of the
reins of government into the hands of the Progresistas. The bad
example of democratic France frustrated his disinterested designs,
changed his benevolent intentions, and compelled him to transport
and imprison, by wholesale, the very men towards whom, a few weeks
previously, he was so magnanimously disposed. Returns of more than
fifteen hundred persons, thus arbitrarily torn from their homes and
families, were moved for early in the session; but only the names
were granted, the charges against them being kept secret, in order
not to give the lie to the ministerial assertion that but a small
minority were condemned for political offences. As to the dispute
with England, although Narvaez' pride will not suffer him to admit
his blunder and his regrets, many of his party make no secret of
their desire for a reconciliation at any price; fondly believing,
perhaps, that it would be followed, upon the _amantium iræ_
principle, by warmer love and closer union than before. The slumbers
of these _ojalatero_ politicians are haunted by sweet visions of a
British steam-flotilla cruising off the Catalonian coast, of Carlist
supplies intercepted, of British batteries mounted on the shores of
Spain, and manned by British marines--the sight of whose red jackets
might serve, at a pinch, to bolster up the wavering courage of a
Christino division--and of English commodores and artillery-colonels
supplying such deficient gentlemen as Messrs Cordova and Concha with
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