“No respect could be accorded to flattering courtiers or to an ignorant people. If the beautiful sun of religious tolerance shone upon the whole of Europe, Spain would be the one country condemned to dwell in the shades of fanaticism. “It is necessary to raise the moral sense of the Spanish people. If this be necessary in all moments of history, it is more than ever indispensable now that despair is taking possession of all hearts, doubt of all spirits, egoism of all consciences, and positivism of all men. “From the sixteenth century Spain has been gradually going down. We do not lose hope, but we think, like the Roman Plato, that the sun of education will gradually pierce the clouds of ignorance, slavery, doubt, and sophistry, and the dawn of justice, order, and faith, will break over our land.” Thirty prelates came to condole with the Queen on the death of the King, and the Church always made a great claim on the attention of the Queen-Regent in consideration of her former position in the religious house in Austria. It was said that, if the Pope left his magnificent home at the Vatican, he would come and take up his abode in Spain; but, as the _Figaro_ said: “The Government of the Queen-Regent will thus put itself completely under the power of Leo XIII., who will be treated like a Sovereign; and he will, they say, be given the Palace of Aranjuez for his residence.” When the Queen-Regent asked Canovas whom she ought to appoint President of the Ministry, he promptly said, “Sagasta”; but the Congress was a fictitious Congress, for, as Martin Hume says when referring to the Parliament in the earlier part of the century: “There was not then, and never has been since, any sincerity or reality in the pretended antagonism of the political parties.” The lack of sincerity in the political opinions, even of those devoted to the monarchy, is shown by Rubio in the speech of Martinez Campos to Silvela; for he said: “I am neither a Liberal nor a Conservative. I made myself a Liberal because I thought the King wanted the Liberals to come in, and now I am a Conservative because the Queen wanted to give the power to the Conservatives.” The politicians in the _camarillas_ at the palace always brought forward the phantom of Carlism to scare the Sovereigns from fulfilling their desire of promoting true Parliamentary elections, and true patriots sought to show King Alfonso XII., Queen Maria Cristina, and, later, Alfonso XIII., that those who tried to prevent the country from enjoying this constitutional privilege of going to the polls were only anxious to preserve their own patronage in the nomination of the deputies, and that the monarchy would be adored by the nation if it favoured the reform which had been promised in the days of Ferdinand VII.