The ball was at their foot, and they had but to pick it up. Instead of that, they kicked it away. A little of the moderation their political designation implies--a little, a very little, of the patriotism and disinterestedness always so loud in their mouths, and so wanting in their deeds, and they might have won the hearts of their weary, war-worn countrymen. That moderation--they had it not, and when vaunting their patriotism they thought only of their profit. No sooner were they in power than they abandoned themselves to their vicious instincts, and thought but of filling their pockets. Christina reverted to her old system of unscrupulous appropriation; Narvaez, having filled the higher military grades with his creatures, and made the army his own by pampering and flattery, gave free play to the unbounded brutality of his nature. Universal corruption became the order of the day, extending through every administration, from the minister of the crown down to subalterns and clerks. The revenue, increasing in the very teeth of Spanish financiers--and which, by the commonest honesty and the most ordinary amount of ability, might soon have been rendered sufficient to meet the expenditure of the country, and the long-neglected claims of the foreign creditor--was so extravagantly collected, and paid tribute to so many infamous peculators, that it was hardly recognisable in the reduced form in which it ultimately reached the treasury. The country groaned, the honest were indignant, the oppressed murmured, the boldest plotted. Groans and indignation, murmurs and plots, were alike in vain; alike they were arbitrarily silenced and crushed. Narvaez and his bayonets were there, keeping the peace; whilst Christina and her friends, with smooth and smiling countenances, picked up the doubloons. Quick! a short shrift and a sharp cartridge for the first who speaks above his breath. This did for a time, and might have done longer, for in Spain he who holds the purse holds the power: besides which, the red breeks of King Louis Philippe's cohorts showed menacingly along the Pyrenees; and Lord Palmerston, although he had been so scurvily treated in the matter of the marriages, might still, it was thought, be induced, in case of need, to send a frigate or two, and a battalion of marines, to protect his old ally Christina, should any serious rebellion break out. But one morning the Parisians turned their king out of his house; and the day afterwards, the Spanish government, whilst labouring under delirium of some kind, ejected Mr Bulwer from his; thus throwing, as the saying goes, the haft after the blade, quarrelling with England at the very moment they most needed her assistance, and remaining exposed, without hope of succour, to the assaults and machinations of their numerous enemies. Whereupon there was an immediate cocking of every Carlist beaver in or out of Spain. The old chiefs, who for six years had starved and