Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 431, September 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The first consequences of a Septembrist pronunciamiento would
probably be the deposition of the Queen and the scattering of the
Chartists; and in this case it is easy to conceive the latter
beholding in an alliance with the Miguelite party their sole chance
of escape from democracy, and from a destruction of the numerous
interests they have acquired during their many years of power. It
is no unfair inference that Costa Cabral, when he caused himself,
shortly after his arrival in London, to be presented to Don Miguel
in a particularly public place, anticipated the probability of some
such events as we have just sketched, and thus indicated, to his
friends and enemies, the new service to which he might one day be
disposed to devote his political talents.
The intricate and suggestive complications of Peninsular politics
offer a wide field for speculation; but of this we are not at
present disposed further to avail ourselves, our object being to
elucidate facts rather than to theorise or indulge in predictions
with respect to two countries by whose political eccentricities
more competent prophets than ourselves have, upon so many occasions
during the last twenty years, been puzzled and led astray. We
sincerely wish that the governments of Spain and Portugal were now
in the hands of men capable of conciliating all parties, and of
averting future convulsions--of men sufficiently able and patriotic
to conceive and carry out measures adapted to the character, temper,
and wants of the two nations. If, by what we should be compelled
to look upon almost as a miracle, such a state of things came
about in the Peninsula, we should be far indeed from desiring to
see it disturbed, and discord again introduced into the land, for
the vindication of the principle of legitimacy, respectable though
we hold that to be. But if Spain and Portugal are to continue a
byword among the nations, the focus of administrative abuses and
oligarchical tyranny; if the lower classes of society in those
countries, by nature brave and generous, are to remain degraded
into the playthings of egotistical adventurers, whilst the more
respectable and intelligent portion of the higher orders stands
aloof in disgust from the orgies of misgovernment; if this state of
things is to endure, without prospect of amendment, until the masses
throw themselves into the arms of the apostles of democracy--who,
it were vain to deny, gain ground in the Peninsula--then, we ask,
before it comes to that, would it not be well to give a chance to
parties and to men whose character and principles at least unite
some elements of stability, and who, whatever reliance may be placed
on their promises for the future, candidly admit their past faults
and errors? Assuredly those nations incur a heavy responsibility,
and but poorly prove their attachment to the cause of constitutional
freedom, who avail themselves of superior force to detain feeble
allies beneath the yoke of intolerable abuses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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