THE SPANISH REVOLUTION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 652, 1 February 1869, Page 4

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION.

(From the Times, 19th October.)

Before the Spanish revolution is forgotten in some new convulsion it may be well to extract the moral of its singular and instructive history. The events of the last month represent only the concluding chapter of the tale. Its beginning dates just two and twenty years back, and perhaps many a young gentleman now propos ing to enter Parliament has but a dim recollection of the famous " Spanish Marriages." Yet in the autumn of 1846 that subject engrosssed the attention and fired the passions of the whole political world. It almost led to war, and it did lead to revolutions as wonderful as ever war itself produced.

When Isabella II arrived at marriageable years, the selection of a husband for so eligible a bride became of great importance, since on the issue of that match would devolve the Crown of Spain. Louis Phillippe, then King of the French, resolved on securing this grand inheritance for his own family, and proposed, accordingly, to marry the young Queen to one of his own sons. Against this proposal the Cabinets of Europe, and especially our own, vehemently protested. In those days the balance of power was still a momentous consideration, and it apppeared impossible to permit a match which might lead fio the union of the Crowns of France and Spain in one one family, or possibly on one head. We were so far wiser than we had been in former generations that we did not on this occasion make the Spanish succession a cause of war, but the diplomatic contest raged with incredible fury, and in the end King Louis Phillippe abated a little of his designs. He no longer demanded the Queen's hand for his son, but he determined that no other House should carry off the prize denied to his own. «The " ultimatum," as we well remember, was proclaimed in these terms by the French press:— *' Only that no foreign blood should take its place on the throne of Philip V." That was the condition absolutely reserved. The Queen's husband must be a Bourbon, and none other than a Bourbon; on that the French nation was resolved. At last it wa3 decided, not by European consent,

but by the preponderance of French influence, that King Louis Phillippe's 1 son, the Due de Montpensier, should be married, not to Queen Isabella, but to her younger sister, while the Queen herself was to be provided for in another fashion. She was affianced to! her own cousin—a match from which; it was well understood that no legitimate issue could be expected; so that! the succession, in default of such issue, would devolve, after all, upon the children of the second marriages—that is, upon Louis Phillippe's grandchildren. On these terms and with these calculationsthe two marriages weresolemnised, and so ended the first chapter of the story before us. We can now look at the results. i

The next scene in the sequence of events shows us the King of the French, his Ministers, and his dynasty all ruined together, nor was it without some reason that the Spanish Marriages were represented as one of the prime causes of the Revolution of 1848. The truth is, the topic had been greedily seized upon by the Republican party in France, as telling against the monarchy and its institutions. These vigilant and daring agitators exposed the wicked heartlessness of the scheming, and turned every point to advantage in the prosecution of their ends. By this and other means they at length succeeded. King and Minister together were hurled from place never to rise again, and the dynasty for which the rights 'of a woman and the interests of a nation had been deliberately sacrificed was driven into exile. In "the mean time events ran their course in Spain. The Queen, not without excuse, pursued a career which ultimately cost her the respect and allegiance of her subjects and after a series of abortive insurrections a real uprising of the whole nation drove her from her Kingdom. Thus the Spanish Throne became actually vacated for the next iu succession even before the death of the Sovereign. We wish only to see Spain and Portugal prosperous together, whether separate or united. If the choice of the Spaniards indeed should really fall on a Portuguese Prince, the election is more likely to merge Portugal in Spain, than Spain in Portugal, though the union of the two Peninsular Crowns is probably about the last result which the authors of the Spanish Marriages would have anticipated. We must have told this story, however, to very little purpose if it has not shown the folly of all such political intrigues. The actual narrative of events, when contrasted with the sketch of expectations, reads like the bitterest of satires. Nothing happened according to calculation either on one side or the other. The least that can be said of the scheming which arranged the Spanish Marriages is that it was all thrown away; but it may be said of it with equal truth that it ended in the confusion of its authors and the discomfiture of all concerned.