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provincialism, to the exigencies of a national unity and undivided empire.

The government of Espartero fell, it must be remembered, not simply under the influence of internal disunion, but from its total failure as a Reforming Administration. Had the great ends which it proposed to itself in 1854- and which, if realized, would have formed a splendid epoch in the ART. VIII.-L'Espagne et ses Derniers domestic history of Spain,-been attained, Evènements. Par M. GABRIEL HUGEL-in 1856, in any considerable degree, that MANN. Paris, 1856. Government would certainly not now have been overthrown. Two years constitute WHATEVER be the duration of the Duke an ample period as a test, not indeed of inof Valencia's Ministry and it is even stitutions themselves, but of the problem possible that the Government will be bro- whether these institutions can be effectually ken up while these pages are in the press-reformed by the individuals who undertake it is clear that the immediate future of the policy of their reconstruction. The Spain will continue to involve a policy of Duke of Victory's administration, it will reaction from the liberalism of Espartero, be remembered, addressed itself, from first so far as concerns the Constitution of the to last, to three cardinal points. These State; but it is at present impossible to were-1. The establishment of a new polipredict whether or not that reaction will tical and municipal constitution; 2. A setpermanently extend to the social reforms tlement of the relations of the army to the and material improvements of the nation. National Guard on such terms as should The resumption by the late government, afford a guarantee of political liberty; 3. under certain modifications, of the Constitu- The prosecution of extensive material retional policy of 1845, both in its political forms by the aid of a confiscation and sale and municipal relations, and the final suppresssion of a National Guard, previously depressed by the influence of O'Donnell in the Cabinet of Espartero, which have restored the centralizing policy of the Moderado Chiefs, are definitive facts, and such as will scarcely be affected by any immediate nent organization for the State; and its change in the administration at Madrid. But the question of a prosecution of the social and material reforms originally indicated by the Duke of Victory's Government directly involved as it is in the sales of ecclesiastical property at this moment suspended by the Crown-is one on which the late administration was notoriously at issue, and on which it is probable that nei- property, which formed the first condition ther the existing Ministers, nor the proximate candidates for power, are united in opinion.

of the property then vesting in the Church.
During the whole period of the Espartero
Government, the prosecution of this triple
policy was exposed to perpetual misadven-
ture. The Provisional Constitution of
1854 wholly failed to establish a perma

discussions daily declined from public con-
troversies into private quarrels. The Na-
tional Guard was never constituted as an
effective popular force, and so far were the
material reforms in contemplation of the
Progresista Government from being ear-
nestly commenced after two years of ad-
ministration, that the sales of ecclesiastical

of their accomplishment, were, in 1856,
not less contested in theory than unaccom
plished in fact. These circumstances sup-
The cause of this altered phasis in the ply, of course, no sort of justification for
immediate politics of Spain, is to be found the stroke of policy which supplanted Es-
in the fact that while neither the dissolved partero by O'Donnell. But they serve to
Constitution of 1854, nor the dissolved explain the decline of enthusiasm into apa-
National Guard, were so far satisfactory thy towards the Government of 1854, and
institutions as to command the ardent sym- that withdrawal of national support which
pathies of the people, the question of the sapped the foundations of the Progresista
ecclesiastical sales is sustained in its origi-power.
The immediate consequence of

nal vitality by the conflict of the increasing these events is the total disorganization of
poverty of the Government, with the reas- the liberal party in the State; and the re-
serted claims of the Romish Alliance. lapse of Spain into a comparatively despo-
It is probable, therefore, that the division tie régime forms, in such a country, the in-
of opinion upon this subject among those evitable recoil from a reforming policy that
who are agreed on Constitutional questions, has failed.
will maintain a wide theatre of political The probable postponement of the elec
contest, without disturbing at present the tions under the new constitution until the
existing organization of the State.
spring of 1857, and the presumptive ac-

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quiescence in other measures of the late and forms at this day the archetype of the selfof the present government, except in regard classified "Conservative" ministries of the to mere points of detail, by all but a party Continent. too disorganized for effectual resistance, This violation of the territorial rights leaves the Amortisacion, or, the sales of ec- of the Church in Spain, dates originally clesiastical property, the chief immediate from a statute passed by Christina and the political question at Madrid. It is appa- Estatuto Real, in 1835. In the first inrently impossible that the royal decree, stance it affected the religious orders alone. which has lately announced a suspension The monks and friars were uncloistered, and anulment of these sales, can succeed in subject to liberal pensions which were rarepermanently disposing of this tradition of ly paid. This change of condition was the government of Espartero, inasmuch as consequently not inconsistent with their the most urgent necessity is daily calling for practical destitution. No class of politiits resumption. The treasury, even while the cans, therefore, could have treated the trareforms contemplated by the liberal ad- ditionary claims of the Church with less ministration are in abeyance, is known to deference than the Moderados themselves. be wholly unable to meet the public de- The property of the secular orders was mands; and the credit of the Government next assailed; and both the tithes, and a is reduced in a degree which renders almost large share of their territorial property, impossible the contraction of loans, without were replaced by a State-tax, termed a other visible means of a liquidation of the Contribucion de culto y clero. The collection interest they involve, than the ordinary of this charge was vested in the alcalde of revenue affords. In these circumstances, the each town or village, with powers for its apprehensions of a financial crisis in the enforcement by the alcalde against the perState are directly staked against the hostile sons taxed, but with no such powers of enprejudices of the ultramontane party. The forcement by the clergy as against the alincrease of the army, as an inevitable inci- calde himself. This officer, who was then dent of the succession of a repressive to a annually elected by the inhabitants, (we beliberal system of Government, renders this lieve in almost every instance,) seldom endifficulty even greater under the present, forced the payment of more than a small than under the Liberal administration. It fraction of a charge that would have endanwas not necessary to a relief of the finan- gered his own re-election; and the secular cial embarrassments of the State, that any priest, first deprived of his original revenues, considerable portion at least of the produce and next of a large share of the meagre in- * of ecclesiastical sequestrations should be demnity by which those revenues were reapplied to the ordinary expenses of admin-placed, usually declined on whatever preistration: the mere fact of the continuance carious livelihood spiritual menace might of this policy formed a means of credit to extort. the Government.

It may be well, perhaps, in order to arrive at a just conception of the conditions on which alone material reforms are likely to be based in Spain, to glance at the history of this alienation of ecclesiastical property, which, if applied to our own country -perhaps the only really Conservative empire of Europe-would be viewed as the last triumph of infidelity and social disorganization. So completely alien are the relations of parties in Spain from those recognised in England, that this very sequestration and sale of the property of the Church, which it is now the fashion of the Moderados to decry as a revolutionary scheme, is a measure which they first sanctioned in theory, and which they initiated in fact.

The Spanish priesthood was then commonly represented as altogether vitiated and demoralized. That this demoralization may have been increased by the comparative destitution to which that body were subjected by political sequestrations, it is, no doubt, fair to presume; but it can hardly be questioned that if they had not already lost the sanctity of their religious character, they would have been originally supported by public opinion against a policy of spoliation which did not take effect against the secular clergy, at least until the cessation of the commotions incident upon the civil wars. This policy, moreover, it must be remembered, was pursued by successive Administrations, chiefly with the view of maintaining the direct expenses of government, after the pecuniary and commercial exhaustion It happens, moreover, that a signal pre- which domestic conflict had produced. The cedent to this policy is to be found in the prosecution of the sequestrations was arrestsequestrations of Hungarian Church proper-ed by the first Ministry of Narvaez. With ty in 1809, by one of the first acts of the return, therefore, of Espartero to office Prince Metternich's administration, which in 1854, there yet remained a considerable

share of ecclesiastical property not yet alien-alone could render justice to all classes of ated by the State. It then became the the nation. Duke of Victory's aim to resume, with a In the issue, then, of this question, much view to a prosecution of material reforms, of the future of Spain is involved. If the the sequestrations which preceding Ministries remainder of the ecclesiastical property be had pursued, with a view to a discharge of the alienated, we do not believe, when we conordinary expenses of public administration. sider the application of that remainder at In here analyzing the principles of a ques- the present day-and even if we suppose tion which still appears to arrogate the the Church in Spain to be a less corrupt inforeground in the immediate politics of stitution than it really is-that religious inSpain, these two considerations must be terests will sensibly suffer. If, on the conheld in view first, that whatever may be trary, the sequestrations be permanently the moral authority of the State over pro- suspended, it is wholly impossible that perty held by institutions which it professes those reforms, the want of which render the to maintain, the State had, in 1854, already condition of Spain an anomaly, without a acted upon a recognition of this authority parallel among the States of Europe, can in a degree which then at least rendered its be effectually carried out. The question, in policy irreversible in fact; and, secondly, fact, may almost be represented as a questhat the advance in this respect in the policy tion of civilisation. of Espartero upon that of his predecessors, It will here, then, be our double object to consisted simply in reducing the anomaly demonstrate the real necessities of Spain, presented by the antagonism of a rising in regard to the elements and constitution principle of State-payment, and a declining of the Government, and to the reforms and principle of territorial possession, into a improvements of the nation, independently uniform system consonant to the genius of recent legislation. It must be borne in mind, that the principle at issue had been virtually conceded by all parties in the State. For although it may be true that the principle of sequestration applied by the Progresistas towards the secular revenues, was initiated by the Moderados in 1835, as against the property of the regular orders alone, it is impossible, in a country exclusively Catholic, to dissociate the rights of regular from those of secular ecclesiastics. In England, on the contrary, at the period In reference, then, in the first place, to of the Reformation, the two questions were the elements of government in Spain, the altogether distinct, because the antecedent evils incident to the existing system may be Protestantism of the State had already resolved into two principal classes-the one ignored the regular orders as an essential as arising from a total absence of the ordipart of an ecclesiastical establishment. But nary restraints of political morality, and the the Roman Catholic Church, which the State, other as resulting from the glaring disharin Spain, alone professes to recognise, ac-mony between the principles of the constituknowledges, of course, no such distinction. tion, and the social and national predilecThe questions, therefore, as they related to tions of the people. So far as concerns the the two bodies, were identical in point of first of these classes, Spain exhibits the anosanctity and right.

of its political system. It will then be seen, that even the Ministry of Espartero never attempted to cope with these evils in their full extent. Many of them, no doubt, lie too deeply in the social system of Spain for any single administration to check. But we shall attempt to show, that there still exist elements of political reconstruction in that country which have never yet been called into action, and form the only means at once of durable government and permanent reform.

maly of a State more or less constitutional There can be no doubt that an establish- in fact, in which the principle of moral aued Church, still recognised by the State, thority is nevertheless subordinated to the deserved a far securer provision for the principle of political revolution. The forms payment of the revenues which were assign- of popular government, on the one hand, ed to it, in place of its former territorial even when extended to their utmost length, rights, than it actually obtained. But we have rarely conciliated the hostility of the are confident, whatever may have been the people to the State: and on the other, corruptions of the preceding ministry of they have almost always proved unable Sartorius, that the Government of Espar- either to extinguish intrigue, to tero sincerely addressed itself to those ma- tyranny, or to avenge corruption. In the terial improvements of the nation, which-course of the following observations, we shall while their adoption involved no new advert to the principal springs of action principle of spoliation were necessary which maintain this political demoralization conditions of an ultimate promo

The antagonism to which we here allude, most apparent contradiction between the between the constitution of the Government Progresista and Moderado constitutions, inand the character of the people, has a far somuch as the former maintained, and the wider application than as regards the mere latter depressed the system of local governdifference in the successive systems of polity ment. But this difference, however great in that have been introduced during the reign its results on the actual polity of the State, of Isabella. Each of these systems, with was in effect of a scarcely more than formal a great difference undoubtedly in degree, character. Under either system, Madrid has been based upon a scheme of centraliza- became the spring of government-the Protion, from which the national idiosyncrasy of gresistas governed the empire through the each province involuntarily recoils. The local institutions, and the Moderados governProgresistas, indeed, appear more nearly ed without them. By the action of these of the two to have rendered the political local institutions-which, as we shall see, system the reflex of the nation itself. But, they almost entirely coerced-the Progreswhile the Moderados excluded all freedom, ista government of the day made head against they, on the other hand, excluded all order, the Moderados throughout the country. and all fairness in representation. Both By suppressing those institutions-and by were purely partisan systems, conceived replacing their moral influence in favour of respectively in the interest of the two poli- liberalism by an increased military forcetical parties which centred at Madrid. Of the Moderado government made head the four systems which have subsisted dur- against the popular power. ing the last nineteen years—and which alone have any practical relation to the present time-the Liberal constitution of 1837 was supplanted by the Moderado constitution of 1845; and that system was ultimately replaced by the Provisionary constitution of 1854, which, in turn, has given way to the scheme of polity recently proclaimed by the O'Donnell administration. Thus, it was the aim of the policy of 1854 to restore, in great degree, the system of 1837, and it is the aim of the policy of 1856 to restore the system of 1845. During the struggle of the last two years between liberty and repression, the constitutions of 1837 and 1845 were the only practicable antecedents. The Carlists and Semi-Carlists who were ranged upon one extreme, in advance of the Moderados, and the Republicans, and Exaltado-Progresistas, who were ranged upon the other, in advance of the Progresistas, are now collectively exerting less influence in Spain than either the Progresistas or the Moderados alone. A revival, therefore, of the constitution of 1812-which consisted of a rabble organization is equally impracticable with a pure despotism.

It is obvious, therefore, that under the rule of either party nothing could be more alien from the true acceptation of the term " Conservatism" than the political institutions of the Spanish provinces. If it had been customary for the larger landholders of Spain to live upon their property, instead of squandering their revenues either in Madrid or in foreign capitals, these conflicts, in reference to the principles of municipal and provincial government, would have assumed a very different shape. Whatever change had taken place in the former, the contest in reference to the latter would have rested between the democratic and the aristocratic, or territorial element. The local counterpoise of the two parties would in that case have been perpetually maintained, while the Moderado administrations would have been at once less corrupt, more temperate, and more secure. But through the contrast between the progress of the towns and the indigence of the country, the aristocratic element remained dormant. The Moderados accordingly pursued a policy of despotism in the provinces, and a policy of conciliation at Madrid. Of the two dominant parties in the state, the one rendered the Crown a corrupt dictatorship—the other a mob monarchy.

Both the system of 1837 and that of 1845 -between an assimilation to one or other of which government in Spain appears likely to oscillate-were chargeable with this capital Under such constitutions, it is clear that deficiency, that they ignored the great fact their distinction, in regard to the benefit or that Spain was still an aggregation of nations, the injury that they may entail, lies chiefly in as completely distinct in their social and the character of the individuals invested with political prepossessions as in the period in the charge of public administration. So which they constituted separate states. Un- long as the difference between good and bad der neither constitution was there any at- ministers more than countervails the differtempt to recognise in Government the idio- ence between the terms of a Moderado and syncrasies of single provinces, and still less a Progresista constitution, and until a more to effect any kind of harmony in the general beneficial polity can be established, the acelements of power. There was, indeed, atual form of government can be of little

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consequence. The popularity enjoyed by Espartero in 1854 was by much more the result of his personal character than of his political opinions.

on the payment of taxes. In virtue of these precautions, the Provincial Deputations consisted of respectable persons and not of mere adventurers. But they were still The principles, however, at issue between political partisans. The Progresista Govthe constitutions of 1837 and of 1845, so fully ernment at Madrid aimed at little more involve the vital questions in dispute at this than to make them the instruments of their day between the popular and monarchical own power. To aim at governing despotiparties in the State, that their history may cally in the name of liberty is a charge be viewed as an illustration of the evils which political rancour has sometimes adwhich a prosecution of either policy must duced-but most falsely adduced-against embrace. It may be well, then, to glance the Whig administrations that have lately at the character and the actual working of the existed in this country. No governments, constitution of 1837, to which the Liberal perhaps, ever carried out, both in theory party, since their discomfiture in July last, and in practice, measures more really lineappear to be growing desirous to recur. It ral than the Whig ministries. But that may be fairly doubted whether the temper of the Spanish people, in 1837, admitted of the formation of a better scheme of polity than that which was then actually carried out. But it will be seen that those circumstances do not apply to the present state of the nation.

charge, which was false as applied to Great Britain under the Whigs, was essentially true as applied to Spain under the Progresistas. Over each province, and in immediate subordination to the Minister of the Interior, an executive officer, termed the Gefe Politico, was placed in authority. His This Constitution established three distinct relations to the Provincial Deputation bore organizations of popular authority. These the nearest resemblance, among our own inconsisted, first of the Ayuntamientos, or stitutions, to those of a Colonial Governor Municipal Chambers, whose jurisdiction ex- towards the legislative assembly of a nomitended over each town or district,-second- nally self governing colony. Whether or ly, the Provincial deputations, whose autho- not these relations were clearly defined by rity was usually co-extensive with the law, we do not at this moment recollect. provinces severally, and thirdly, the House But it was always the policy of the Gefe Poliof Deputies in the Córtes, or Central Legis- tico, under the direct instrumentality of the lature. In regard to the first of these insti- Government at Madrid, to trench upon the tutions, the Ayuntamientos, the elections functions of the Provincial Deputations until were regulated by household, and therefore all independent action was eliminated from almost by universal suffrage. The result of their constitution. The influence of the this system was often similar to what has been lately witnessed in Kansas. Whenever an election was contested, law gave way to force, and force accordingly carried the day. The most clamorous agitators were thus generally chosen as the Alcaldes, The jurisdiction of these assemblies, thus or executive officers, of the towns and dis- virtually exercised by the Gefe, was just of tricts. The freshness of these events in the that character that favoured the absolutism mind of the Spanish people probably forms of the Central Power. They were charged the reason of their acquiescence without a with the superintendence,-first of local admurmur in the recent decree which, in res- ministration, and, secondly, of the elections toring the chief provisions of the Constitu- to the Córtes. They exercised, in fact, the tion of 1845, provides that in all towns functions of irresponsible revising barristers possessing a population of 40,000, the nomi- before the elections took place, and of comnation of Alcaldes shall vest in the Crown.mittees of our House of Commons on preSo far as this measure is concerned, the sentation of petitions against the Candidates acquiescence of the respectable classes arises returned. Not content with erasing the rather from a pacific than from a servile character.

Gefe-who was always the nominee of the Government - was paramount; and the rights thus conceded to the people in theory became rights absorbed by the Government in practice.

name of a hostile voter from the lists, they disfranchised without scruple, and on the The composition of the Provincial Depu- most frivolous pretexts, such districts as retations was free in many respects from the turned members to the Córtes opposed to the errors of the municipal polity. The suffrage, policy of the Government. Moreover, the which was a comparatively restricted one, Spanish system of representation embraced was analogous to that which regulated elec- that method of double, or indirect election, tions to the Córtes. Unlike the municipal that is now the bane of several of the German suffrage, its exercise was made dependent Constitutions. Whatever, then, may be our

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