Those, who thought so, knew little of Spain, and not much of the men from whose genius this regeneration was expected. Ferdinand received with alarm the intelligence of the new revolution in France, and the dethronement of his relation; but he did not hurry into any uncommon or extravagant measures of precaution. The sources of danger were manifest-the excitement of a popular feeling within, and an invasion of the refugees from without. The latter had to be waited for, and he could only increase his forces, and strengthen the garrisons on the frontiers. It was scarcely possible to add to the vigour of the existing system for repressing the former, and in itself it was a danger of infinitely less magnitude than in countries less accustomed to contented ignorance. Ferdinand's national guard-his royalist volunteers and militia--were not the admirers of "a citizen-king surrounded with republican institutions;" that was a monster beyond the reach of their conceptions. They were the devoted worshippers of simple arbitrary power, such as they had it among themselves; and had been the tools of the most extravagant of all parties, the apostolical. The events of France caused much less sensation in Madrid than had been expected; the public tranquillity was not for a moment interrupted; all anticipations of popular commotions were, in every part of the kingdom, miserably disappointed. The strictness of the examination of all strangers on the frontiers was increased; a new and more severe decree was issued against the press, while the government gazette gave full details of all that was passing in France, taking its information

indifferently from all the papers of the French metropolis. The government knew that such details would sound, in the ears of the great mass of the population, as a history of heinous crimes. The minister, Calomarde, addressed to the royal courts, and the archbishops and bishops of the kingdom, a circular, containing the royal portraiture of the Parisian insurrection: "The factions, after proscribing the august dynasty which had rendered the kingdom of France happy and powerful, loudly cry out for the whole fruit of their victory, and require from the Provisional Government the entire abolition of hereditary rights; that there should no longer exist a privileged religion; that the Catholic church and the support of its ministers should cease to be a charge on the state, and be left to the charity of the public; that the municipal and provincial authorities, and those who command the military force, should be elected by purely democratical means; that the high functionaries distinguished by their loyalty to their unfortunate king, or by their adhesion to institutions preservative of legitimacy, should be either placed beyond the pale of the law, or deprived of all political influence; and that the magistrates, who dispensed justice from the tribunals, should be stripped of their functions. These, and similar demands, sufficiently indicate the future condition of this great nation, worthy of a better fate than that which awaits it, and make Spain tremble, on account of her propinquity, and the state in which she was left by the last civil commotion." Spain, he told them, had learned from very recent experience, that revolution,

a monstrous crime when it succeeded, was a great evil even when it failed, leaving behind it the melancholy necessity of governing very despotically to prevent its recurrence. "If revolution succeed in destroying the elements which constitute the force of government without finding a strong opposition, she proceeds to give law to the sovereign-to overthrow the altars to sacrifice the ministers of religion to destroy the hierarchy -to attack the rights of property -and to inundate the country with blood and horror, as she did in the years from 1820 to 1823, an epoch during which the prime movers of those scandalous proceedings amassed their fortunes, leaving us the entire loss of our colonies, the ruin of our agriculture, commerce, and industry, the payment of immense sums due from good faith and justice, to those who contributed towards our pacification, and, what is more unfortunate still, the sad necessity of employing measures of rigour to re-establish peace and good order." The king, his master, however, felt secure against every danger in the fidelity of "the general mass of Spaniards, animated by a religious and passionate love for their king, and their salutary monarchical institutions, and in the aid of a numerous royalist militia, a loyal and compact force, which revolutionists would be unable to conquer in any point of the kingdom, where their despair may drive them to begin their attempts, even though they choose those parts which are not defended by the troops of the line"-and the king was in the right. He followed, at the same time, the example of the other European powers, in not provoking collision

by any obstinate refusal to acknowledge the new government and dynasty of France.

While thus preparing against danger from without, it appeared that a more immediate attack threatened the government from within, but from doctrines just the reverse of constitutional. More arbitrary than even Ferdinand, was the powerful party of the Carlists; they had long regarded the cabinet as not much better than moderate or constitutional, but their great object was, the restoration of the Church and the Inquisition, to all the omnipotence which it had enjoyed before the abolition of that formidable body -a restoration to which Ferdinand had always refused to consent, knowing perhaps that it would be formidable even to royalty, and knowing certainly, that he could not restore the Inquisition and retain its property. The Carlists, in fact, were the party of the church; they had taken their appellation from the king's brother, Don Carlos, whose views and principles were supposed to be their own, the more especially as it was any thing but certain that they would have refused to compass their ends by giving him the crown instead of his brother. They possessed great influence; acting under the direction of the priesthood, whose wealth lavished largesses with unsparing hands, they were the most formidable body in the nation; and it was even doubtful whether, with the royal volunteers, their influence, or that of the king, was the more powerful. On former occasions, the disturbances and insurrections in Catalonia had been clearly enough traced to their intrigues. On detection, they allowed their instru

ments to be dragged to the scaffold and the gibbet; the heads, which had guided them, were too powerful to be touched. Their dislike, or distrust, of the king's government was aggravated, in the present instance, by a measure injurious to the future interests of their nominal chief. The infant Don Carlos was the presumptive heir of the throne; the succession to the Spanish crown was subjected to the Salic law; no daughter of the reigning king could interrupt its descent. The new queen of Ferdinand was about to make him a father; and Ferdinand, to secure the crown to his own children, whether they should be male or female, determined to revoke the Salic regulation. The Carlists, and all who were in their interest, were kept in profound ignorance of the intended measure; they had no notice of the blow till it was struck. They first learned the design from the proclamation in the streets of Madrid, of the decree by which it was executed. Ferdinand's foresight was justified. The infant, with which the queen presented him, was a daughter.

The irritation of the Carlists betrayed them into hasty plots, which were revealed or detected before they were ripe for execution. On the 24th of September, a number of royalist volunteers assembled at their quarters, and commenced the cry of "Death to the Ministers!" "Long live Charles V!" (the king's brother), in which they were joined by a concourse of women, composed of the lowest dregs of the people, and collected for the purpose. The party was headed by the drum-major. Immediate intelligence of the disturbance was conveyed to M. Carvajal, their commandant-general, who

instantly proceeded to the palace to lay before his Majesty a statement of what had occurred. Prompt measures were adopted; the ringleaders of the disturbance were at once secured, and, in consequence of the confessions of some of those who were arrested, a considerable number of others were apprehended. On the following evening, thirty royalists, of a far more respectable class, were taken up in a house to which they had repaired for the purpose of concerting measures to attain the same object, and, in an adjoining room, muskets and ballcartridges were said to have been found. On the following Sunday, the royalists of the neighbouring towns poured into Madrid in great numbers, to assemble at a grand review, but they were ordered to return home without delay. Madrid was immediately filled with the guards and troops of the line, between whom and the royalist volunteers there was very little harmony. The latter were still allowed to retain their place at the palace, but thrice the number of guards were stationed in their vicinity. Several individuals of distinction were forthwith banished from the capital, as implicated in the plot. Among them were the archbishop of Toledo; the exgeneral of the Cordeliers; M. Eiro, formerly minister of Finance; Elizalde, a councillor of state; Gonzales, formerly superintendant-general of the police of the kingdom. Among the arrested was a great number of persons more or less directly connected with the church. A morning or two afterwards, the prior of the convent of St. Basilio was found dead in his bed, with his throat cut. It had been proved that some days before a quantity of arms had been carried to the con

vent; and it was said, that to prevent disclosures which might compromise some very high personages, the prior, of whose silence fears were entertained, was thus put out of the way. The plans of the conspirators, if they were ascertained, were not made public; but their general object was plainly announced in a proclamation, secretly printed, and circulated throughout Madrid, a few days afterwards, in which the birth of a daughter, excluded from the succession by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, was treated as a declaration of Providence against Ferdinand, and the nation was called to proclaim Don Carlos immediately.

"Royalists! - Divine Providence has just manifested to the Spanish nation, by the birth of an Infanta to our present ruler, that the august personage to whom the throne of Spain in right and justice belongs ought to be at once acknowledged. Our beloved Charles should be forthwith proclaimed the sovereign of our country, as he is already of the hearts and hands of every well-intentioned Spaniard; and Ferdinand VII should be made to abdicate in favour of the person who alone is worthy to be our king. Let us unite, then, and with one voice evince that we are no longer to be made the cat's-paw of a vile court, whose only object is, to plunge our country into ruin. Let us set the example to the provinces, and be the first to deserve the protection of the prince in whose favour heaven itself has declared."

The alarm excited by the plots of the Carlists had scarcely subsided, when the expected arrival of the constitutional refugees, in hostile guise, on the eastern frontier, was announced. The government VOL. LXXII.

had prepared the kingdom for their appearance by a decree, which could not be called cruel because it ordained that all armed rebels found in the Spanish territory should be put to death. All who should abet them in their rebellion, by counsel or correspondence, or by furnishing them with arms, ammunition, money, or provisions, were to be treated as traitors. The civil and corporate authorities of any part of the territory on which those armed rebels might appear were to transmit notice of the event to the military governor of the district, an hour and a half per league being allowed for transmitting the intelligence. The punishment of neglecting this provision was to be a fine of 1,000 ducats, and six years service in the gallies of Africa, if the neglect proceeded from mere inattention! but if it arose from favourable dispositions to the rebels, the penalty was death. To keep up a correspondence with any of the refugees, inferred a fine and two years imprisonment; to harbour a rebel, a fine and four years of the gallies. As to the refugees themselves, the police was instantly to transmit to the frontiers and sea-ports a minute description "o those perverse emigrants," who had been sentenced for political offences: and whoever of them should be apprehended, though unarmed, was forthwith to be condemned to death. The king provided for the worst by the most singular decree that ever received the signature of a sovereign. He had formerly abrogated all that had been done under the brief constitutional regime as having been exacted from him by compulsion: he now provided beforehand, that, if the constitutionalists should succeed, every thing was to be considered as compulsory.

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The decree bore, "That, if, in the course of events, a change in the government of the country should take place, and that such change should affect the absolute authority of the king, all his acts under such a regime, particularly those of a constitutional tendency, should be considered as resulting from coercion, and therefore, at a favour able period be abrogated as illegal and invalid." The publication of this decree was said to have been prevented by the interference of the foreign ministers. Triumphant liberals must have been greater blockheads than ever professed constitution-mongers commonly are, if, with such a warning, they had allowed themselves, in the day of their success, to use Ferdinand as an instrument for doing any thing. The refugees in the mean while had approached the frontier. The revolution in Paris had set them all in motion, and had brought them together in the French capital from every country of Europe. The first thing they did was, to appoint a provisional junta of government, for what purpose it is not easy to It consisted of four persons, named Isturiz, Vadillo, Calatrava, and Sancho, who proceeded forth with to Bayonne, to enter upon their duties, or to be ready to enter upon them, so soon as a footing on the other side of the Pyrenees should be gained. At Bayonne, in Pau, and in other places along the frontiers of Navarre, Arragon, and Catalonia, was collected the invading army. It consisted of the refugees, some Italians and Portuguese, and two or three hundred recruits who had been raised in Paris. The object of their assembling was not concealed: France was allowing an invasion of a friendly power to be prepared with

see.

in her territory. Her government, in truth, dared not interfere, at the moment, to check an enterprise which would have found favour with the populace of Paris. Afterwards, but not till the plan had failed, she did interpose, and both ordered the refugees away from the frontier towns, and separated those of different countries from each other. But the invading army was not calculated, either by its numbers or by its equipment, to occasion Ferdinand much uneasiness. Many of the refugees were unarmed; almost all the recruits had no sooner arrived than they departed, when they found neither money, nor equipments, nor a commissariat provided for them. Not more than a thousand men seem ever to have entered Navarre. The direct purposes of invasion they were altogether unfit to accomplish; and they could expect even temporary success, only by entering a country the population of which was ready to join their banner. But here, too, they had proceeded in gross ignorance of what they were about. Not only had they established no communications with the interior, but do not seem to have been in any degree aware of the spirit in which they were to be received. A thousand men invading Spain must have expected, if they were not madmen, to have found reinforcements in Spain. In Spain scarcely a man joined them: on what sort of calculations had their hopes been founded?

To all this was added the most absurd and self-interested spirit of disunion. The movement was to be a military one. The very first requisite was the appointment of an absolute military leader to arrange and conduct the operations, and direct every motion of the different