NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 242, 19 March 1875, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(From the Spectator.') The counter-revolution has arrived in Spain. Don Alphonso, the Prince of the Asturias, came of age on November 17th, and his advisers, among whom S. Canovas del Castillo is the principal, decided that the time was ripe, and that trains long si nee laid should be exploded. The Captain-General of Madrid informed Serrano that Alphonso must be restored, the Generals of the recruited Army of the North were warned to be ready, the Fleet was eager for the change, and on December 28th or 29th General Martinez Campos “pronounced” in Valencia for Alphonso XII. In two days the armies of the North and the Centre, the garrison of Madrid, and the fleet had followed, and on the last day of the year an Alphonsoist Cabinet was in full possession of the Executive. The King, who was in Paris with his mother, was informed of the movement, and invited to enter Spain, and by the last accounts had started on his journey. He is a somewhat precocious lad of seventeen, but has been carefully trained, and declares himself a “ Liberal,” —which, however, may mean anything or nothing. It appears to be certain that all the Bourbons, Don Carlos and his brother excepted, recognise Alphonso. It is rumoured that some Carlist regiments have submitted, but this is not yet confirmed, and there is grave reason to believe that some of the cities — especially Granada, Valladolid, Barcelona, and Sargossa—will revolt, thus drawing away forces from the army of the North. Nothing, however, happens in Spain that was expected, and the new Ministry has wisely confirmed all the existing civil authorities.

The head of the new Ministry is S. Antonio Canovas del Castillo, a man of unusual cultivation, great influence over persons, and of opinions best described as those of leading Orleanists. That is to say, he is in favor of strong 'government, a free but managed Parliament, and a sufficient army, is a Catholic with no good-will to Italy, and is on most matters a moderate Conservative. He has selected as Minister of the Interior S. Robledo, a man trained by Narvaez ; as Minister of War, General Jovellar, a good soldier ; as Minister of the Colonies, S. Ayala, a keen, hard-hitting debater; and as Minister of Finance, S. Salaverria, Marshal O’Donnel’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the only successful one who ever appeared in Spain. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is S. Castro, said by a correspondent of the Times obviously in favor with the Alphonsist chiefs to be a Liberal. The tone of the new Ministry cannot yet be judged, but its first difficulties are Carlism and Cuba, and it is stated that its first order has been to come to terms with the insurgents in the island. No response has yet been received from Cuba, wheie the volunteers will be extremely irritated by the order, and may perhaps “pronounce” for Carlos.

Mr Forster made a farewell speech to his American friends on the 14th December, after a dinner given him by the New York Union League. Wemay mention here that Mr Forster thinks the war has saved the Union, and that he is hopeful as to the future of the freed men. He had seen a white overseer acting as foreman among the blacks on a sugar plantation, and quite contented with the change. Contrary to Jamaica experience, production has not fallen off in the South, the actual crops taken from the soil, including sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco, areas large as they were before emancipation. He counted on the United States now heartily to aid in putting down slavery, wherever it could be reached, and thought that the war which had produced this result would prove the most important of this eeatury.

Marshal MacMahon has made another effort to obtain his organic laws. He has called together the chiefs of the Conservative parties, and told them that he will strike no coup d'etat, but earnestly advised them to pass the Constitutional Laws, especially the one on the transmission of powers. There is no evidence that he has been successful. The Right and Extreme Left, of course, absolutely refuse. The Left refuses, unless the Republic is made definitive, and the Left Centre wants a less Conservative Upper Chamber. If the reluctance continues, the Marshal will either have to give way and leave the succession to accident, or to do what he ought to do—accept the Republic, and bo gain a clear and large majority. He is not likely, however, to embrace this alternative, as events in Spain will greatly (Strengthen the Monarchists in France, and inspire even the Orleanists who accept the Republic with some doubt, more especially if the new Monarch succeeds.

Englishmen are slow to believe that whole territories can be depopulated by starvation, but it seems evident that in some districts of Asia Minor entire tribes and scores of villages are) perishing from hunger, while the worst accounts of the Persian famine of 1872 appear to be authentic. According to the Cologne Gazette, the English arbitrators, who traversed Seistan to settle boundaries, travelled days without seeing a child, and estimated the mortality at 1,500,000 —more than a quarter, or on Sir H. Rawlinson’s calculation, more than a third of the population, There has been no improvement in government since the Shah’s visit, the soldiers still plunder at will, and if the present system lasts a generation Persia will be a desert, to be occupied by Russia at discretion. Even now it may be doubted if it has any real power. December 31st was, on the whole, the most disagreeable day we remember in London for fourteen years. The thermometer, which marked 10 degrees of frost in the open air, could scarcely be raised above 60 degrees indoors, the streets were as slippery as glass, and there was thin, irritating, slushy snow about. The air was so thick with mist that gas would scarcely burn, and to crown all, a deep, black bank of fog hung over the city like a pall. The fog did not descend, but the darkness, which in the Strand was too deep to allow anyone to read, lasted the whole day, a most unusual event, and the streets looked almost spectral. The effect was not like that of night, but of some new condition of being, in which either the atmosphere had lost its power of transmitting light, or the eye had lost its power of perceiving objects. Few carriages were visible, the cabs crawled, and thi pedestrians slunk about as if they wen afraid at every turn of being run over, li was a day to have made the heart of a Lap lander rejoice that he had at last found ; climate much worse than his own, and tc have justified S. Visconti, the Engineer, ir b ipcoucluiion that London would be a bean-

tiful city if its inhabitants could only see it ; a day on which a great fire would hardly have seemed a calamity. We have commented elsewhere on the pathetic appeal of the committee of the Evangelical Union to Mr Disraeli, for help against the clerical insurgents in the Church, and on Mr Disraeli’s encouraging, though rather unsubstantial reply—to the effect that the great triumphs of the Church are bound, in his opinion, to take place in the great cities of England—which, as yet however, is nob the case. We may add here that the committee of the Evangelical Union seem to derive much comfort from Mr Disraeli’s vaguenesses. They observe that the courteous tone of the Premier indicates his “ sympathy with the importance of the great subject which has thus been brought under his attention,” though how, by the way, one is to sympathise with “ the importance of a great subject,” unless that subject be a subject of the Queen —that is, a person, and its “ importance” is his selfimportance, with which one does not usually sympathise very much—it is not very easy to see. But after drawing this illusory comfort from Mr Disraeli’s letter, the committee of the Evangelical Union go on to advise a suspension of all active attempts to reform the Church, and a concentration of their energies on resisting any attempt to legalise the Eastward position of the celebrant and the use of Eucharistic vestments. We confess we think the Evangelicals are making a mistake in attaching an equal importance to these matters. The Establishment cannot remain at all unless the moderate HighChurch party be content, and the way to content them is to admit either position of the celebrant —declaring at the same time that neither position is to be regarded by the worshippers as a doctrinal confession of their belief—but to resist the introduction of the novel eucharistic vestments, which is a conspicuous challenge to the people, and is open to no ambiguity of interpretation; Even ome of those who were most earnest supporters of the Public Worship Eegulation Act in the House of Commons last Session, were anxious to see the decision as to the only legal position of the celebrant carefully revised by the new Court of Appeal. And assuredly the'.Church cannot win great ‘•triumphs,” either in the great cities or anywhere else, unless the principle of the Gorham decision —that is, a large toleration of both the Evangelical and the High Church views—be steadily sustained. Prince Bismarck has published the Circular of 1872 in which he invited the various Governments to take counsel together to secure a proper observance of all the forms by the Conclave at the time of the next election of a Pope. We dc not quite understand the true drift of that circular. Can it really mean that, so far from enforcing a proper observance of all the forms, the Governments referred to should league themselves together to force the hands of the Conclave ? We can hardly believe that in saying one thing Prince Bismarck meant just the opposite. But if he didmean what he said, then what will the Protestant States gain by taking care that there is no irregularity in the proceedings of the Conclave ? Only, as it seems to us, that the Pope, when elected, will have all the more authority. If there were irregularity, if there were indecent haste, if there were room for a Catholic scandal and Catholic criticisms on the proceedings, the Protestant States would not lose, but gain, by the result. It can hardly be for a State which declares the Vatican Council an outrage and profits by that view of the matter, to see that the at the next Conclave should be above suspicion or reproach. It looks very much as if what the Prince did mean was to take care that the Conclave should be subjected to severe pressure--not that it should be free from all pressure. But even so, there will be scandal. Perhaps the best thing Protestant States can do is to keep aloof altogether from matters which don’t concern them, and in which they may easily do mischief, but cannot easily do good. Canon Liddon wrote to the Times of Christmas Day to refute Monseigneur Capel’s assertion, —made in the reply to Mr Gladstone —that teachers like Canon Liddon are, though unintentionally, leading their disciples towards Rome. Dr Liddon maintains, reasonably enough, that to teach doctrine held in common with Rome is not to Romanise,—else to teach Theism would be to Romanise. But he adds that to teach Sacerdotalism, in its moderate Anglican form, is not to Romanise, and that the only true allies of Rome are the friends of that restless policy which would “ at one moment rid us of our creeds, at another would ignore our Orders, at a third would invite a Parliament consisting of men of any or no religious belief to regulate our worship of Almighty God.” In other words, it is the proposal to enlarge the comprehension of the Church, so as to suit the actual religious state of its worshippers, which drives to Rome those who think that doctrinal immutability is the first “ note” of a true church. Possibly. But is not Monseigneur Capel right in supposing that both sacerdotalism, in however moderate a form, and the theory of doctrinal immutability itself, necessarily imply a living Church authority which shall determine who are the true priests and what is the unchangeable doctrine, and that that living Church authority certainly does not exist among Anglicans 1 And if so, it is not the proposal to change ecclesiastical conditions which drives our Anglicans to Rome, but the complete absence of any organic Church authority to condemn and resist change, which, nevertheless, Dr Liddon has taught his disciples that it is everybody’s duty to condemn and resist. A church of moderate pretensions to authority as much needs a living organ to sanction its eclecticism, as does one of imperious pretensions to sustain its absolute decrees. The Times is actually softening its tone on the subject of Arctic expeditions. For a generation at least, that mirror of middleclass opinion in England has entertained and freely expressed two quite capricious prejudices with which the majority of its readers have hardly ever had the least sympathy. The one was its hatred of the African Squadron intended to put down the slave trade, and the other was its steady opposition to Arctic exploration, on the ground that it is Quixotic, fruitless, and expensive of human life, Now at last it is actually abandoning this latter position. It has given a list of all the recent Arctic expeditions since the last fatal one, Sir John Franklin’s, and showed that all the crews of the various vessels had returned in safety to their homes with only such deaths as might fairly have been expected even in less dangerous seas. In thirty-two expeditions only thirty-eight deaths occurred, being at the rate of only

I'7 per cent to the number of persons employed. But the conversion of the Times to the policy of Arctic expeditions will be as remarkable an event as the discovery of the mild Polar Sea itself. It will be the end of a peculiar tradition, the sacrifice of a journalistic heirloom, the surrender of a fanciful literary inheritance.