SPANISH LOYALTY. [From the Times.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 900, 18 March 1854, Page 4

SPANISH LOYALTY. [From the Times.]

The loyalty of the Spaniard is one of the -• great national passions which has withstood the -shocks of time. "W-ith'his bigotry, his bull-fight, -and bis paper-cigar.it makes him amends for the absence of much political knowledge and 'much political ambition. There is in this passion of loyalty — for feeling we must not call it — something that carries us back to the "East in earlier ■ epochs of ''Oriental history — to the climes where -all save one were slaves, and that one the master —the sovereign ruler and dispenser of riches or poverty,iife or death. But, as if the Dotion of loyalty had not been sufficient in its intensity, in the heart of the Spaniard it has been commingled with the burning enthusiasm of 'the -crusader. "Well nigh eight centuries elapsed 'from the time the Goth Roderick lost his kingdom to the Moor until, under the walls of ' Gran? Ada, its restoration to the dominion of the cross was completed by the arras and policy of Isabella and Doling all this period ~ there was acted -on the very soil of Spain the--same drama nrhich for other natioLS was played -out in Palestine, If, then, the spirit of the Crusades has left indelible traces upon the genius of the other western nations, eacb of which only - engaged in them a small contingent and despatch--ed it to the world's end, what must be the case ; with the Spaniard'? *His great battles of religion "were fought upon bis own floil^ his Bosworths, his Nasebys, his Marston Moors, were in the 1 Castiles or in Andalusia. Hence the spirit of chivalry became stereotyped in Spain, and exists >«yen to the present day, despite the corruption of 'the magistracy and the pettifogging iniquities of , rthe various -stock-jobbing associations which VjKiwve? succeeded each other in the supreme direction of affairs. Misled as they have been by *tbeir civil rulers, -misguided by their priests, trained to' butchery by the partisan leaders in the civil wars, the 'Spaniards are still a noble •race. They acquiesce in Royalty as the inevita- j ble guide and supreme authority of human life, as "Eastern warriors were wont to acquiesce in it. They bow their heads -submissively to destiny, ■ clothed r in 1 -'buTnan' I fonn, -and 'tricked inTegal at-: tire. More than this, it is with them a devotion — an affection. They love their- Queen — or did so once. Time was when the Spaniard was as Othello, without the Moor's capacity for jealousy; he would once have brooked no questioning of the Royal Desdemona who was the incarnation 1 of the historic glories of bis native land. Strike ■at her, and you struck at the chastity of his wife, at the good name of his daughter, and bpspatter■ed with dirt the escocbeon of a family which was .an old one in Castile in the days of Alonzo the Wise. *Let no son or daughter of a Constitutional Government, — let no diseipleof " balanced powers, " — let no pupil of the ingenious A*bbi§ iSieyes affect to sneer -at the intensity of a feeling which is beyond "his > comprehension. The •imagination- of the Spaniard colours up -objects ■to the tone of bis own <climate. He believes what he feels. It would have been as useless a task six years back to lead him to" a just esti- j "mate of the capacity and character of his' and pf the general effects of her ad-j (ministration, as it would have been to reason) with a dancing Dervish at Constantinople upon the ultimate ohject of his contortions. Nor can >it be denied ibat in a political point of view this exaggeration of loyalty has had its good effect in binding together the various provinces of the Monarchy, which would scarce have acknowledged any other bond of union. It would require another Sis roondi to chronicle the jealousies and reciprocal heart-burnings of the Castiles, of Arragon, of Catalonia, of Andalusia, of the -other Spanish provinces ; they have been held together by two ties only — the one is religion •concentrated into bigotry — the other was loyalty, exaggerated into an ardour of unquestioning demotion of spirit and of soul. We Sire now witnessing the spectacle of the decay and extinction of Spanish loyalty. That ■which the imbecility of the Fourth Charles and the selfish brutality of Ferdinand VII. could iiot effect has been accomplished by a young woman and a •Queen. The task of extinguishing so remarkable a feeling as that of the loyally of the Spanish name was no easy one. Misgovernraent would not have done it. Your Spaniard is as accustomed to misgoverument as to his cigarito. We question, indeed, if good government — that is, government upon the London or Washington model — would not have irritated irim into rebellion more quickly than any given number of acts of rigour. Corrupt the constituencies — dissolve the Cortes — censure the press — gag the Tribune — a Spaniard can do very well without these institutions, and would as soon have thought of rising against the throne of Isabella the Catholic on account of their absence as be would have done had his Royal mistress denied him the enjoyment of souchong and bung beef. Acts of cruplty and dragonnades would not have done it. Queen Isabella might bave laid provinces waste, and massacred the inhabitants, and the bulk of her subjects would bave esteemed it right royally done. A Queen who was ready to dismiss her loving subjects to the garotte chair, or the amenities of a snooting party, would have had all their sympathies. Queen Isabella might have laughed at law and order, justice and humanity, and her subjects would not bave hissed her in an opera box, as they did the other <Uy. It was on the 18ih of ' October that a Spanish Queen endured this.last indignity at the hands of ber people. There bad not of late been more than the usual amount

*df corruption in the various departments of Government. What has happened in the course of the last few weeks has happened twenty times j 'before, but at the bull-fight and the -opera, on the ( Alameda and the gates of her palace, the Queen J had enjoyed immunity from censure — for censure , was -insult. So great had been her offence, — so deeply had she wounded the punto d'oncr of the Spanish raee — that they 'had no alternative but to remain silent, or to -blow away the loyal traditions' of eight centuries with a breath. The Queen entered the royal box with her consort — with the •consort of Louis Philippe's finding. She stood prepared for the usual loyal demonstrations. The splendour of the scene was mechanically sus- , pended that the royal inarch, according to cut* torn, might give time and harmony to the glad , acclamations of her subjects. But from all sides; of the hull — of a -hall crowded with the most il- ! lustrious personages of Spain — a cry of aversion | resounded. There should be no march played. ! There should be no glad cry of welcome. Where the Queen of Spain looked for cheers her *ar was greeted with hisses and expressions of disgust : — "Basta, basta de esoV'—"We have bad enough of this !" — " Que continue la opera /" 11 Let the opera proceed !" Was it insensibility — was it scorn? The Queen did not change countenance. Not so the husband of the Queen by registry and in name. Not so another person in that Louse, who at the present moment occupies a post at Madrid for which no name is given in the hierarchy of Spanish dignitaries, although a Spanish muleteer would be at little loss to supply the requisite denomination. There stood the successor of Cbarl-s V., glancing down upon the people, who were cursing her in their hearts, and hissiug at her with their lips, with no one to rely upon save the person who for the moment had succeeded to her favour. All this passed at Madrid on the evening of Tuesday, the 18th of 'October. No single act of imprudence could have produced such a result. The loyalty of the Spaniard was so deeply seated that it could not be obliterated by a passing folly or a passing crime. It was necessary to drag the Spanish crown very long through very miry spots indeed before the nation woold have risen against its wearer, as though treason had been committed against the repose of a private family. This is not the first time that the nation had witnessed the spectacle of notorious profligacy in the highest station. But, bad as bate been the previous instances of such disregard of all obligations, no Spanish Queen has as yet loved to exhibit tbe living proofs of her successive acts of shame before the eyes of a nation. Now, there is no poetry possible for the Heloise of many Abelards. What wonder, then, that tbe loyalty of tbe Spaniard, being such a passion as we hive described it to be, should have 'been converted into its opposite by so shameful an exhibition ? As the feeling was a personal one, so it is much to be feared tbe retribution may one day be. We, who regard Sovereigns with a more tempered feeling of respect, and who most fortnnatety have never occasion to think of our Sovereign but of a lady as spotless in her life as she is eminent in her station, can scarcely comprehend what a revolution of feeling may lead to in such a cass as this. The conduct of the Sovereign is 'felt as a personal disgrace by every Spaniard in the solitude of his own dwelling. Such is not quite the end of the " Spanish marriages" — of that politic scheme for the sake of which a great Minister sacrificed his character for probity, and an able Monarch one of the first crowns in Christendom.