kind in the category of monarchs, or the régime of such a cowardly oligarchy in the species known as Constitutional? In Spain, as in England, the Parliament represents the people in theory, but, in sober truth, the Spanish people have almost as little to do with the election of their so-called representatives as with those of England or the United States. The Congress, in which all the legislative and administrative power in the kingdom is fabled to have its source, is affirmed by Spaniards to be as servilely subservient to the Prime Minister who selects it as if it were his political bodyguard, and it has been known to colour, modify, and contradict its own vote as readily as Polonius descried in the cloud pointed out by Hamlet the figures of a camel, a weasel, and a whale. What can be more characteristic of this collective wisdom of Spain than the fact that the Deputies of the present Congress supported Sagasta when he pledged his reputation and staked his position on the thesis that autonomy to the Cubans meant peace to Spain; that they supported him when his prophecy was belied and the country drifted into war; that they applauded him when he refused to cede an acre of Spanish possessions to the United States, and they concurred with him in signing away all Spain's American possessions? They cheered him in his noble determination to defend the colonies at all costs, and then they justified him for having left the colonies without defence; "in a word," exclaimed my Spanish acquaintance, "Sagasta is the King of Spain-such a king as might have been thrust upon us by the Yankees-and Doña Maria Christina and the Cortes are his political instruments. Constitution indeed!"

Again, can there be anything less Constitutional or more cowardly and immoral than the method of defending political persons and parties which consists in an elaborate machinery for sacrificing a helpless Queen and her only son? Everybody knows that the ruin of the kingdom and the impoverishment of the people have been brought about by the "Constitutional parties," Liberal and Conservative, and more particularly by Señor Sagasta and his friends, who have given the coup de grâce to the Spain of history. Everybody knows that the Queen Regent and her child remained well within the limits assigned them by the Constitution, and did nothing worthy of censure. Yet this "Constitutional " Cabinet and dynastic party, instead of resigning as soon as war broke out, and submitting to the penalty of their blunders, have gone floundering on from bad to worse at the expense of the dynasty, until the nation has bled almost to death and the monarchy has been compromised beyond help, and still they desire to remain, against the outspoken wishes of the people. And in order to keep themselves a float they have suspended the Constitutional guarantees, gagged the Press, circulated numberless lies in the papers, and compelled the royal lady and her son to identify their spotless cause with

that of a pettifogging party, and to accept the odium of acts that were unpatriotic, unstatesmanlike, unconstitutional, and calamitous. In return, royalty of the Constitutional category has received nought but the sorry defence which consists in Señor Sagasta's appeal to his countrymen to respect the august mother and her child, and General Martinez Campos's exhortation to all true Spaniards to obey the lawfully constituted Government.

The irony of fate that lies concealed in these eloquent appeals is visible only to those who know Señores Sagasta and Martinez Campos, but it will not escape the historian. Señor Sagasta is the man who attacked, insulted, and conspired against the august lady who governed Spain, as Queen, when her name was Isabella, and when his profession was that of a revolutionist. General Martinez Campos is the man who, being a soldier of the lawfully constituted Spanish Government, on three several occasions rose up in arms against it, and was once condemned to death in consequence. Are the appeals of these gentlemen likely to be heard? Are the gentlemen themselves the best qualified to make them? The Spanish people alone can give fitting answer. Sagasta and his friends are really fighting for their own petty cause while seemingly defending the shadow of a crown which in bygone days resembled the equator of the globe, through the circle of which the sun's rays had to pass before illumining the world.

Even those who admire the fundamental principles of European Liberalism in politics regard Spanish Constitutionalism as a sneer of Satan's, hurled into and embodied in the political life of the Peninsula. "It never produced, I do not say a genius, or a statesman, but not even a man of the vertebrate order," said a foreign diplomatist. "Its Cabinet Ministers are generally ignorant and always narrow-minded: they remind me of inexperienced, overgrown gamins, irrepressible farceurs. Its judges are venal, timid Civil servants, punishable by, and amenable to, the Administration. Its governors, captains-general, and other high dignitaries most frequently symbolised the corruption and dishonesty of the régime that gave them birth, their palaces in Madrid being stocked with the wealth of Cuba or the Philippines, snatched from the colonists like so much booty taken from foreign enemies. Their laws, even those called fundamental and immutable, could be and were modified, changed, violated at a wink from the Minister, just to humour the whim of a political friend or to wreak vengeance upon a political enemy. The soldiers and marines were robbed and traded upon with as little scruple as if they were Cubans or Philippinos. The Spanish people were taxed, misgoverned, denied education, and refused justice; the kingdom, exhausted and demoralised, was abandoned to the enemy without defence; and the Antilles have been at last converted into a huge tomb, the only remaining record of Spain's vast empire beyond

the seas. And having thus placed the mark of Cain on the Spanish nation, the Liberals shamelessly accuse the army, the navy, the Press, and the people of the disasters which the Government provoked, and which nobody ventures to punish. It is erroneous to make a distinction between 'Liberals' and Conservatives' in this matter; they differ mainly in name. Sagasta and his friends, who are the more guilty of the two, maintain that the country was in a bad condition when they last took over the reins of power. But they do not possess even the excuse of the vultures, who devour but seldom kill their human victims."

An eloquent testimony to the dull inertia or Oriental fatalism of the Spanish people is afforded by the stoical indifference with which they watched the jovial gestures and heard the juvenile jokes of the Cabinet Ministers who had taken upon themselves the onerous duty of extricating Spain from the shoals and sandbanks into the midst of which they had steered her. Even in ordinary times a Cabinet Minister is reasonably expected to display the gravity of the educated gentleman or the reserve of the trained diplomatist; and during a crisis involving the fate of a great nation, madness alone can excuse the public parade of levity which would be punishable in the schoolboy. Yet the most noteworthy words of the Government of Sagasta, during the disastrous crisis which has ended in the ruin of Spain, consisted of their jests and witty remarks. The Prime Minister kept the members of the Congress splitting their sides with laughter, at the time when Spanish blood was flowing freely in Cuba, and he was about to suspend the Constitutional guarantees and govern the country by martial law. Señor Salmeron and the Republicans besought Sagasta to keep the Cortes together till the beginning of August; but the witty Premier remarked, "The heat of the sun makes me sweat terribly as it is, but if it is to be reinforced by the heat of debates—well, I shall melt wholly into water." And Spain forgot the loss of her thousands of sons in the mirth provoked by this clever sally.

On the fateful day on which Admiral Cervera's squadron.was swept off the sea, the Minister of the Marine sincerely rejoiced to think that this naval strategist had forced the blockade and completely escaped from the "battle" improvised by Sampson, and, sauntering about the streets of Madrid, he smilingly received the congratulations of friends and opponents, to whom he repeatedly remarked: "We are now awaiting a telegram announcing that Sampson has blown his brains. out, for that's what that precious Yankee promised to do if Cervera escaped." The Press reproduced this witty saying, and Señor Auñon became a hero whose halo, though composed of borrowed light, was almost equal to that of Cervera himself, until the following day, when the dissolving view was succeeded by another. At the time that the

fall of Santiago de Cuba was hourly expected, and the representatives of the Press literally besieged the Ministers, eagerly picking up every crumb of information which should fall from those dignitaries' lips, Señor Gamazo, the most sedate, serious, and respected member of Sagasta's Government, his face beaming with smiles, addressed the journalists to this effect: "Gentlemen, I regret to say that the news to-day is very scanty and unimportant. But although I cannot add to it just now, I can at least gladden your hearts with the promise of a very great event indeed. I am not at liberty to describe it more fully, but I think I may tell you that it will become known to-morrow at noon." "Is it very important?" asked a journalist. "I have said so," was the reply. "Is it likely to be favourable to Spaniards or the reverse?" asked another. "Favourable to us Spaniards," answered the Minister. It is needless to state that every newspaper in Madrid published, commented on, and criticised this oracular announcement, adding suppositions, prophecies, and forecasts of its own; that it was also telegraphed throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula, where expectation grew keen, hopes waxed high, and the cafés and the public places were filled with politicians impatient for the important and welcome news. Next day the morning papers continued their predictions, and prepared to publish special editions at noon, as soon as the intelligence should be made known. But it did not arrive at noon, nor in the evening. Then other Ministers were questioned as to the nature of the mysterious event predicted by Señor Gamazo; but they pleaded ignorance and provoked scepticism. At last one of the prophetic Minister's colleagues solved the enigma thus: Señor Gamazo, desirous of "taking a rise" out of the Spanish Press and the Spanish people, at the very moment when he and his fellow Ministers were leading that people to the bottomless abyss, venturing upon a jest, spoke of an important event, which the journalists and the population, absorbed in the war, must naturally look for in the political world, but which he knew would consist in the weekly drawing of Government lottery prizes! The lurid light thrown upon Spanish politics and the "Liberal" Government by a practical joke of this kind, perpetrated upon the Press and the people at the most critical period of their history, reveals itself unaided. Comment is needless and apology superfluous. Señor Gamazo is the most staid and respectable politician of the party, and the most influential Minister of the present Government. Ex leone unguem. Not even in Greece, Turkey, Servia, or Montenegro would it be possible to match the political opera bouffe which the dynastic Constitutionalists have heretofore been representing in contemporary Spain. As the proverb says: "No hay mas que una España en el mundo."

It may be matter for astonishment, therefore, and perhaps also for pity, that, despite those mortal insults added to irreparable injuries,

the Spanish people made no sign, uttered no murmur; but there is certainly nothing surprising in the fact, for which I can vouch, that such sympathies as make themselves felt in the masses are strongly in favour of rapid and radical change in general, and of that change in particular which is represented by Carlism. It is not for a foreigner to sit in judgment on the "merits" of two conflicting parties between which there may, after all, be no substantial difference, but it is wholly impossible to shut one's eyes to the patent fact that, come what may, Spain cannot possibly fall lower than the bottom of the yawning abyss into which she has been dragged by self-styled statesmen who ought never to have been permitted to throw up their useful professions.

Bat the listlessness or resignation of the masses will rapidly vanish when abstract problems of political principles and national honour have materialised themselves into a question of life or death, and famine decimates the people. And that time is unfortunately at hand. Already the sums for current expenses which the Government needs but cannot obtain from legitimate sources are being "created" by the printing-press, and the bank-note issue is to be increased up to 2500 millions of pesetas. In the near future the interest on the foreign debt is to be cut down 50 per cent., "for a time," according to the financial recipes of 1851 and 1872. Spanish finances are truly in an almost hopeless state. For the past three years the deficits have been enormous, and have been covered solely by extraordinary sources of revenue, such as the Morocco war indemnity, the increased exemption tax paid by Spanish youths to free themselves from military service,* payments of arrears from Cuba and Peru, &c. &c.

*

In future the only extraordinary feature of Spanish budgets will be the expenses; extraordinary sources of income there are none, and even some of the ordinary sources are becoming exhausted and dry. From 1892 to 1897 the expenses have gone on augmenting till they reached the respectable figure of 881 million pesetas for the present financial year, whereas the income of the State reached its maximum in 1893-4 with 745 millions. The close of the war means the sealing up of a large number of sources of revenue and the increase of the expenditure on the foreign debt. Again, 8000 generals and officers will have to be permanently provided for, to say nothing of the troops of Cuba and the Philippines who are on their way home. Spanish officials in the colonies must likewise be cared for; the regulation of the debt owing to the Bank of Spain will absorb over 800 million pesetas, and the payment of arrears in Cuba probably half that sum.t Leaving, therefore, the debts of Cuba and the

In the financial year 1895-6 the returns under the head of military service tax rose from 8 million pesetas to 26 millions. In the following years they increased still further. Without these "windfalls" the deficit would have amounted to 28 million pesetas in 1895-6, to 95 millions in 1896-7, and in 1897-8 to 150 millions.

+ These calculations have been made by Señor Gonzalez de la Peña, a friend of the Prime Minister. Spanish budgets are utterly untrustworthy.