After three years of loyal support, said Sanchez Toca, in an interview with the representative of the Conservative _Correspondencia de España_--the organ of all that is left of the old Conservative policy--Señor Maura should have consulted his Cabinet before taking a resolution which completely alters the normal course of national politics. “I stood aghast,” said he, “at the thought of the incalculable results that must spring from those furious voices convoking the whole Christian world to a holy war against Ministers holding office under the Crown, to whom even the name of Liberals was denied, and shouting with anathemas that he was no true Conservative who held other relations than those of implacable hostility with men appointed to office by the King.” And he concluded by pointing out that the true Conservative faith irresistibly impels those who hold it towards conciliation instead of provocation, and that if this reason for its existence failed, the Conservative party must disappear. Whether Sanchez Toca could have formed a party under his own leadership on the old Conservative lines it is not possible to guess; for after making the protest of which the above is a brief abstract, he left Madrid, and it was announced that he intended to make a protracted sojourn abroad, so that no one was able to accuse him of self-seeking in his secession from the Ultramontane party. The dignity of his position, as compared with that taken up by the supporters of the “implacable hostility” which has become a byword among the scoffers, needs no emphasis. I have dwelt at perhaps undue length upon his part in the affair, because it is assumed abroad that Señor Maura represents an united Conservative party, which, as the above declaration proves, is by no means the case. How completely this was misunderstood by many of the English journalists who wrote about Spain in 1909 was shown by their comments upon the strength displayed by Maura in holding the whole “Conservative” forces together, and their complete misapprehension of the real causes of the dissensions which have always prevailed in the Liberal camp.