Spain, under the regency, has been governed by a constitutional monarchy, which was proclaimed in 1876. By its Constitution, the king is inviolable; he is the executive, and the power to make laws is vested in him and the Cortes, which comprises a senate and a congress, coequal in authority. The senators are of three classes: First, those by their own right, as grandees of the kingdom, privileged through their titles and possessions; in the second place, those nominated by the Crown; in the third, those elected by the communal and provincial states, the church, universities, etc. Congress is composed of deputies, at the rate of one to every fifty thousand in the population; though since 1878 Cuba has been entitled to one in every forty thousand of free inhabitants paying taxes to the amount of twenty–five dollars annually. The whole country is, or should be, represented in the legislative power, and by the Constitution mutual checks are placed upon both king and Cortes; for while the former issues his decrees, yet they must be countersigned by one of his ministers, and he can not marry without their approval. Further details of government are divided amongst the ministers—of war, marine, agriculture, commerce, public works, justice, finance, colonies, foreign affairs, and a president of the council. Thus, while the king might be morally responsible for an unpopular law, yet he could not be held accountable through his inviolability, and the odium of it would fall upon the ministers of his appointing, who might placate popular resentment by resigning. This explanation will account for the frequent changes in the ministry, not only during the reign of Alfonso XII, but under the regency. After the death of Alfonso XII, and after the queen regent had taken the oath of allegiance to the Constitution, a ministry was formed under the leadership of the great Liberal, Señor Sagasta, to whom the Conservative Canovas promised his support, as well as the Republican Castelar. Beneath the shadow of their great calamity, all parties nobly rallied to the support of the queen with a loyalty which was, if anything, intensified by the birth of the infant Alfonso XIII, on May 17, 1886. But in September of that year a revolt broke out under General Villafranca, in which ten thousand men were more or less implicated, and which was suppressed only after great exertions on the part of the loyal troops. The premier, Sagasta, had pledged himself to reforms of many kinds, but he had the greatest difficulty in redeeming them without the support of the Government officials, who were as corrupt as they were numerous; for, since the times when Spain owned vast colonial possessions, there had always been a corrupt official class revelling in the uncounted millions that overflowed from the colonial treasury. Even so late as 1888 it was estimated that nearly three million dollars were embezzled during that year by civil employees, and thus the annual deficit was