Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

A CALL

WHAT IS SPAIN ABOUT?

Whilst France, writhing under self-inflicted wounds, is preserved from anarchy only by despotism; whilst Germany, convulsed by the imitative folly of her children, enacts a travestie of Paris tragedies; and Italy, like a froward child, screaming to go alone before she can walk, kicks at her leading-strings, and falls upon her nose – the affairs of a third-rate power, such as Spain has dwindled into, have naturally enough been overlooked and forgotten. It is time to recur to them for a moment. Spain has once been, and yet again may be, a leading member of the European family. Under a better government, she again may see days of prosperity and peace. Again her merchant-fleets may cover the seas, her traders be renowned for enterprise and wealth, her population be commensurate with the extent and productiveness of her territory. And this may occur whilst nations, but yesterday paramount in riches and power, sink by their own madness into impotence and poverty. Her rise will not be more astonishing than their decadence.

At present, it appears the destiny of Spain to be misgoverned at home and misunderstood abroad. The insurrection now budding into life and vigour in so many of her provinces illustrates this proposition. Originating in the grossest maladministration, out of Spain its scope and nature, and the possible importance of its results, are misconceived and underrated. It differs from any previous revolt since the death of Ferdinand VII., inasmuch as it is less the effort of a party, striving for the success of a principle and a man, than the uprising of a nation struggling to shake off the yoke of a galling and intolerable tyranny. There can be no doubt that a very large majority of the Spanish people heartily wish success to the movement against the existing government of the country. Unfortunately, a majority of this majority confine themselves to wishing, instead of putting their hand to the work, which then would soon be done. Their lukewarmness, however, can hardly be wondered at, when we remember how many of them have sacrificed property and security to their political convictions, and ruined themselves in the strife of parties. Of these parties, the two most numerous, long opposed to each other, and whose tenets once stood wide as the poles asunder, have forgotten old hatreds, made mutual sacrifices, and joined heart and hand against the common foe. The result is, the division of the country into two camps. On the one hand is the Queen-mother – in whose dexterous fingers Isabella is a mere puppet – Narvaez, O'Donnell, and the rest of the corrupt cabal from the Rue de Courcelles. These have possession of the machinery and matériel of the state. They hold the purse, which places at their devotion two armies, one of soldiers, the other of policemen, employés, spies, and venal emissaries of all kinds. To use a simile appropriate to the times, they have got upon the engine and tender, coals and water are at their command; but they misguide the train and ill-treat the passengers, clamorous for escape from their control. Spain, let Madrid papers argue and deny as they will, is in a state of general fermentation and violent discontent; on the brink of a convulsion which may very possibly end in the ousting of Isabella II., and in the enthronement of her cousin, the Count de Montemolin. In Spain a republic is an impossibility, and almost without partisans; and if the present queen be swept away by the tide of national indignation against her unscrupulous mother, the crown must naturally devolve upon the son of Don Carlos. At least, he is the only eligible candidate – we may even say, the only possible one. Don Francisco, the Incapable, would of course depart with his wife; his brother, Don Enrique, convicted of instability and of treachery to his party, would have nobody's support; and the Duke of Montpensier is so totally out of the question, so wholly without adherents as an aspirant to the Spanish throne, that we have difficulty in crediting a statement confidently made by persons worthy of belief, that the recent victim of a great revolution still directs, from his retirement in this country, intrigues designed to place a crown upon the head of the youngest hope of the house of Orleans. On the other hand, the Carlist party is still strong in Spain – much stronger, comparatively speaking, than it was two or three years ago; for it has clung together and preserved its integrity, whilst other parties have split and become dismembered. And although the bulk of the Spanish people may be less anxious to get any one man, or set of men, into power, than to get rid of those who at present so brutally roughride them; yet the conviction has been gradually gaining strength that, by character, education, and fair promises, the Count de Montemolin offers the best guarantees for that firm, impartial, and just government, under which alone is there a chance of Spain being raised from her present sunken and unprosperous condition. The Progresistas, who fiercely hated and fought against the father, rally round the son, persuaded that from Isabella, so long their idol, they would in vain look for a realisation of their political programme. Of their cordial understanding and co-operation with the Carlists there now can hardly exist a doubt. A very brief retrospect will suffice to explain its causes and foundation.

When Louis Philippe completed the job of the Spanish marriages, the Carlists – who, although grievously stricken and disheartened by the treaty of Bergara, had never entirely ceased to labour for the attainment of their one great end – rested upon their arms, and awaited in comparative inaction the dawn of better days. They abandoned not hope, nor abjured intrigue; but they may be said to have ceased, for a while, to conspire. In their fallen state, with their slender resources, what could they do against the puissant King of the French? For he it was against whom they must contend, did they venture to assail the throne of Isabella, and to dispute the rule of Christina. In England, too, their old enemies, the Whigs, had just come into power; the name of Palmerston was a sound of ill omen to Carlist ears; Bilbao and British marines, Passages and Commodore Hay, were words inseparably coupled, and pregnant with fatal memories to the upholders of legitimacy in Spain. Supposing that, by dint of indefatigable exertions, they succeeded in raising funds, in mustering an army, ill entering Spain sword in hand – forthwith they were met by that ugly and unnatural monster, the Quadruple Alliance, waiting, open-mouthed, to blast them to the four winds of heaven. An attempt, under such circumstances, would have been worse than useless; it would have been squandering a chance, and the Carlists had none to throw away. So they waited and watched. Meanwhile, what did the rulers of Spain – the persons governing behind the mask of that poor, ill-brought-up, ill-used princess, Isabella? It was natural to suppose that, having many enemies in the country – many persons and parties whose ambitions and interests were checked and thwarted by their ascendency – they would endeavour, as far as possible, to conciliate and gain over these, or at any rate to secure the support of the masses, by moderation and good government. A very moderate amount of this latter, be it observed, would have sufficed to gain them popularity, and to give stability to their reign. The nation had endured so much – had suffered so terribly from civil wars, rebellions, reactions, and the like – that all they expected, almost all they asked, was to be kicked gently. They dared not think the screw would be altogether taken off; but, considering the damaged state of their articulations, they did hope it would be a little eased. A man who had undergone a course of knout, might look upon a cat-o'-nine tails as a blessed exchange, and be ready to hug the drummers who applied it. This was exactly the case with Spain, long drained by war-contributions and ravaged by contending factions. From her state of exhaustion and suffering she had not had time to recover during the honest and conscientious, but brief and too gentle rule of Espartero. Never was there a finer chance for a party coming into power than the Christinos or Moderados had, when they seized the reins. The ball was at their foot, and they had but to pick it up. Instead of that, they kicked it away. A little of the moderation their political designation implies – a little, a very little, of the patriotism and disinterestedness always so loud in their mouths, and so wanting in their deeds, and they might have won the hearts of their weary, war-worn countrymen. That moderation – they had it not, and when vaunting their patriotism they thought only of their profit. No sooner were they in power than they abandoned themselves to their vicious instincts, and thought but of filling their pockets. Christina reverted to her old system of unscrupulous appropriation; Narvaez, having filled the higher military grades with his creatures, and made the army his own by pampering and flattery, gave free play to the unbounded brutality of his nature. Universal corruption became the order of the day, extending through every administration, from the minister of the crown down to subalterns and clerks. The revenue, increasing in the very teeth of Spanish financiers – and which, by the commonest honesty and the most ordinary amount of ability, might soon have been rendered sufficient to meet the expenditure of the country, and the long-neglected claims of the foreign creditor – was so extravagantly collected, and paid tribute to so many infamous peculators, that it was hardly recognisable in the reduced form in which it ultimately reached the treasury. The country groaned, the honest were indignant, the oppressed murmured, the boldest plotted. Groans and indignation, murmurs and plots, were alike in vain; alike they were arbitrarily silenced and crushed. Narvaez and his bayonets were there, keeping the peace; whilst Christina and her friends, with smooth and smiling countenances, picked up the doubloons. Quick! a short shrift and a sharp cartridge for the first who speaks above his breath. This did for a time, and might have done longer, for in Spain he who holds the purse holds the power: besides which, the red breeks of King Louis Philippe's cohorts showed menacingly along the Pyrenees; and Lord Palmerston, although he had been so scurvily treated in the matter of the marriages, might still, it was thought, be induced, in case of need, to send a frigate or two, and a battalion of marines, to protect his old ally Christina, should any serious rebellion break out. But one morning the Parisians turned their king out of his house; and the day afterwards, the Spanish government, whilst labouring under delirium of some kind, ejected Mr Bulwer from his; thus throwing, as the saying goes, the haft after the blade, quarrelling with England at the very moment they most needed her assistance, and remaining exposed, without hope of succour, to the assaults and machinations of their numerous enemies. Whereupon there was an immediate cocking of every Carlist beaver in or out of Spain. The old chiefs, who for six years had starved and struggled in the cause of their king, (succumbing finally before a general's treachery rather than to the arms of their foes,) looked out from the nooks where they long had rusted in retirement or exile, and more than one was heard, in the words of the old Jacobite song,

There was a like stir amongst the Progresistas, who were being hanged, banished and imprisoned by the score, on account of revolts and disturbances in which they had less share than the secret agents of their persecutors. Either from presumptuous confidence in their own strength, or because they deemed they had gone too far to recede, and that it was too late to adopt a conciliatory policy, the clever gentlemen in power at Madrid, not content with reviving, by their insane foreign policy, the hopes of two powerful and hostile parties, continued to increase the number of their domestic enemies by persevering in a system of tyranny and persecution. The consequence has been a coalition from which they have every thing to dread – a coalition which has been denied by those interested to place it in doubt, but whose existence each succeeding day renders more manifest.

It may be asked how it is possible for stanch absolutists, such as the Carlists have always been, to coalesce with men of such liberal principles as the Progresistas profess. This question is replied to in three words. When he accepted his father's renunciation in his favour of his claims upon the crown of Spain, Count Montemolin did not bind himself to adhere to his father's prejudices, or to the less tolerant part of his political creed. During nine years' detention and exile, the young prince, whose adherents claim for him the rights and title of Charles VI. of Spain, has doubtless become convinced of the impossibility of ever bringing back the country he aspires to reign over to the old system of irresponsible absolutism and priestly tyranny, – a system rendered especially odious by the weakness and vices of the two last monarchs who governed by it. The Progresistas, on their part, desire no exclusive favour, no monopoly of power: compelled to withdraw their support from her they once enthusiastically defended, they have no other candidate to put forward. Don Enrique, in whom they once were disposed to confide, basely sold and betrayed them; and as to Espartero, whose ambition has been the subject of such fierce diatribes on the part of the ignorant and the malicious, both in Spain and in England – the idea of his aspiring to regal power appears too ridiculous, to those acquainted with his simple tastes and unobtrusive worth, to be for an instant dwelt upon and seriously refuted. No; all the Progresistas ask is a free press, elections conducted without bribery or bayonets, security for persons and property. Do one of these things exist in Spain now? Let facts reply. We read the answer in the suppression or silence of every Opposition newspaper; in the packed benches of the Cortes; in the imprisonment, banishment, and confiscation, without stated accusation or form of trial, of hundreds of innocent persons. From this tyranny, than which none can be worse, the Count de Montemolin promises relief. The Progresistas accept his pledge, and rally round his standard.

The Madrid government, which, since the commencement of the present year, has constantly provoked petty disturbances, as pretexts for arbitrarily consigning to the dungeon or the colonies as many as possible of those they dislike or fear, now find themselves face to face with a real insurrection of most formidable aspect. They have cried wolf till the wolf has come, and they run considerable risk of being devoured. In vain they deny their peril, affect to bluster and talk big; their real alarm peeps through the flimsy cloak of bravado. A government confident of its strength, and of the support and sympathies of the governed, does not condescend to treat and tamper with rebels. If the insurgents be so contemptible in numbers and resources as the organs of Narvaez and the Queen-mother daily assert them to be, why not crush them at once, instead of attempting to buy over their chiefs, who, on their part, pocket the bribes and laugh at their seducers? If Cabrera, for weeks together, lay sick and bedridden in a Catalonian village, why was not a detachment, or, if necessary, a division, sent to apprehend him? Such flimsy impostures deceive no one. The truth is, that, with the exception of a few fortified places, the east of Spain is in the hands of the Carlists and Progresistas, who come up to the walls of the cities and levy contributions at the very gates. The north only waits the signal to burst into revolt; in the Castiles alarming demonstrations are daily made, and armed bands show themselves on various points; in the large commercial towns in the south, whose desire for a revision of the present absurd Spanish tariff renders them ardent liberals, discontent smoulders, and in an instant may burst into a flame. There are Andalusian cities where the appearance of Espartero, or of some other popular and influential Progresista, would at once raise the entire population. At present, however, the revolt is in its infancy, and can hardly be said to have begun. Its chiefs avoid encounters, and busy themselves with organisation – which proceeds rapidly, in spite of the marches and countermarches of Messrs Cordova, Pavia, Villalonga, and the other Christino generals, and of the glorious victories narrated in the columns of the Heraldo and other equally veracious journals. According to these, Cabrera has already been several times totally routed and driven over the frontier. We have strong grounds for believing that, up to this moment, – although his lieutenants have been engaged in small affrays, of little or no importance, but terminating, with scarcely an exception, in their favour – he himself has not smelt powder, burned in anger, since he left Spain in 1840. He waits the proper moment, when his arrangements shall be completed, to commence operations upon a large scale; and meanwhile he very judiciously avoids frittering away his strength in profitless skirmishes. By the last advices worthy of credit, he is at the head of six thousand men, well armed and uniformed, and nearly all old soldiers, in high spirits and thorough discipline. This force does not include the numerous detached and irregular bands spread over Catalonia and Valencia, or various bodies of Progresistas, who march under their own banner, but are on the best of terms with the Carlists, and will co-operate with them in the day of battle. Arms and ammunition are procured without difficulty from France and England. The French Republic has its hands too full to attend seriously to such trifles. Although General Cavaignac, to get rid of the importunities of that blatant knave Sotomayor, did order the arrest of a brace of unlucky Progresistas, there is little chance of his carrying out the preventive system to a rigorous extent, or of his depriving the starving French manufacturers of the crust they may obtain by fabricating arms and clothing for the Carlist troops. As to England, she is, of course, in no way called upon to prevent the export of Birmingham muskets and Hounslow cartridges, even should she suspect their destination to be different from that entered at the custom-house. Indeed, it is shrewdly suspected that Lord Palmerston would like nothing better than to see his quondam friends ejected from Spain, and to resume amicable relations with that country by accrediting an ambassador to the court of Charles VI.

It is worthy of remark that Cabrera, who made himself so notorious, during the last civil war in Spain, by his barbarous cruelties – provoked, but not justified, by his mother's murder – appears now to have adopted a totally different system, and to have exchanged his ferocity for moderation and humanity. We hear of no more cold-blooded shooting of prisoners, or wanton and unprovoked aggressions; Christino soldiers who have fallen into his hands, or into those of his subordinates, have been disarmed and set at liberty; good treatment has been shown to magistrates and other officials, carried off as hostages or held for ransom. The contributions levied on the country have been regularised, and are willingly paid; the peasantry receive the insurgents as liberators, instead of shunning them as spoilers. Furious at this state of things, which they can neither alter nor conceal, the Christinos know not how to show their wrath, or on whom to wreak it; and the means they resort to for the expression of their spite are perfectly suicidal. The unfortunate Constitucional of Barcelona, one of the few remaining papers in Spain which now and then venture to speak the truth, is arbitrarily suppressed for drawing a faithful picture of the state of the province; whilst the very next day one of the government generals confirms the truth of the sketch, and the disaffection of the peasants, by enforcing the premature gathering in of the fruits of the earth, to rot and perish in store, and by forbidding the labourer to carry to the field more than six ounces of food, lest he should sell or give it to the Carlists – annexing to these stringent enactments others equally onerous and tyrannical. All this time, at Madrid and in other cities, arrests continue; and every day fresh victims are consigned to Ceuta, the Philippines, or the prisons, their relatives and friends being thenceforward added to the host of the disaffected. Why, this is stark-staring madness! – the insanity, preceding perdition, with which God afflicts those he would destroy. To discomfiture and destruction, total and lasting, the party still dominant in Spain are to all appearance hastening. None will pity their fall. They will be condemned not only by all just men, but by the most reckless advocates of political expediency; for they have been blind to their own true interests, as well as unblushingly contemptuous of every principle of morality and good government.