The reference to the Constituent Cortes reminded me that this was the date appointed for the consideration of the Government Bill for their election, introduced into Congress on the night of the 4th of March. This Bill consisted of eight articles, the most important of which were that the elections should take place on the 10th of April and three following days, and the meeting on the 1st of May; that all Spaniards above the age of twenty should have votes; and that on the suspension of the session of the existing Cortes a permanent committee from their members, with consultative functions, should be appointed for the interregnum. It was felt that this was throwing down the glove, and the lines were now marshalling for the tug of war. The Radicals are disquieted. They know that if they go to the country not one-third of them will be returned, for the reason that whoever holds the Ministry of the Gobernacion, or Interior, in this paradise of universal suffrage can return the nominees of his party, and determine their majorities with mathematical certainty. Ministers act illegally in the article which provides that men of twenty may vote. The young men are the main strength of Republicanism everywhere, and this article at a single arbitrary scratch of the pen adds half a million electors to the rolls. Hitherto the right of voting was restricted to males who had attained twenty-five years. The Radicals object to this sweeping alteration in the law, made with the distinct object of defeating their chances; and the hatred of those half-million of young men thus sought to be enfranchised by the new Republic will be acquired to the Radicals from the very fact of their opposition. When the hour for opening the Congress came, the building looked more like a barrack than a House of Parliament. A grim Guardia Civil, in a three-cornered hat, stood sentry, with fixed bayonet, at the side-door in the Calle de Turco, by which the Deputies enter. At every window men in uniform were to be seen; officers with jangling scabbards moved about the lobbies and ante-rooms, instead of the usual moody, sallow, shabby crowd of taciturn waiters on Providence, muffled in mantles and hidden in smoke, who hang about for hours, and occasionally pass mysterious slips of paper by the liveried and silver-laced ushers to Señor Don This or That within. What can their business be? I often puzzle myself by asking. Have they claims on Government for ancestral property gone down in the Armada? Are they pretenders to the succession in a licence to sell tobacco and salt in Minorca? Or are they simply intriguing for a ticket to the House? The problem waits for solution.