Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 76, No. 467, September 1854Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 76, No. 467, September 1854
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
In Spain, however, O’Donnell passes for an honourable man, who
keeps his word when it is pledged, and is incapable of the baseness and
peculation of which Spanish ministers have been too often guilty.
Although formed and headed by the most popular man in Spain, and
composed of men by no means unwelcome to the nation, the present
ministry, brief though its existence yet has been, has not escaped
censure for some of its acts. Of course, all the persons whom the
revolution has upset, all the employés who are put on half-pay, all the
friends of the polacos, the partisans of Sartorius, Bravo Murillo,
Roncali, and other notorious ex-ministers, who now find themselves sunk
in the slough of despond, are furious against the new order of things,
and spare no pains to damage the government by propagating false reports
and malicious inventions. On the other hand, the ultra-liberals, the
republicans and clubbists, look upon the present men as a mere
compromise, and declare that the revolution has been nipped in the bud,
and has not gone half far enough. They have faith in Espartero, and
discretion enough not violently to agitate, at least for the present,
against his government; but here there are clearly the elements of two
oppositions, one factious and reactionary, the other, by its impatience
for progress, nearly or quite as dangerous. The most recent and the
principal ground of complaint the latter party has found, is the
intimation in a ministerial document published two days ago in the
_Madrid Gazette_, and which preludes to a decree regulating the mode of
convocation of the Constituent Cortes—that the government intends to
admit no discussion as to the permanence of Isabella and her dynasty on
the Spanish throne. There is at present a very strong feeling in Spain
against the Queen personally, and against the race to which she belongs;
and those who desire to see her compelled to abdicate, or dethroned by
the vote of a National Convention—the proper name for the single popular
chamber that is to assemble on the 8th of next November—do not perhaps
sufficiently reflect on the difficulties to which such a measure would
give rise. They are ready to remove, but are they prepared to replace,
the erring daughter of the treacherous Ferdinand? My belief is, that
were Isabella to-morrow to sign her act of abdication, it would be
joyfully received by a large portion of the nation, but that discord
would ensue as to who or what should replace her. During the latter days
of the Sartorius ministry there were seven or eight candidates in the
field for the premiership—as soon as it should be vacant. There have
lately been nearly as many named for the throne, should the present
sovereign quit it. First there is her daughter, with a long
regency—probably that of Espartero. But this would only lead to fresh
complications. The Princess of the Asturias is a puny, unhealthy child;
besides which there are reasons, known to all, and which I need not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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