SPAIN AND HER FACTIONS. 



It would seem that nothing but the obedience to the powers that be, 

 which forms so national a feature in the Spanish character, could have 

 enabled the Cortes to carry on the government, under such opposing 

 circumstances ; and if this general feeling requires any further illustra- 

 tion, we need but refer to the nature of the resistance, which the Duke 

 of Angouleme encountered on tu's march from Iran to Cadiz. Deputa- 

 tions met the invaders at every step ; in all directions they were received 

 by the noble and by the peasant as their deliverers ; and this, assuredly, 

 cannot be called the effect of fear, when we recollect the bearing of the 

 Spanish nation, when the armies of the same people overspread their 

 fields and occupied their cities and their fortresses but eleven years 

 before. The spirit of the nation could not have changed ; it was morally 

 impossible to be so, therefore the contrast can only be accounted for in 

 the distinctive feelings, with which the people of Spain view national 

 independence and political freedom. In almost every town throughout 

 the Peninsula, the stone of the constitution was thrown from its pedestal, 

 long before the king had left Madrid on his flight to Cadiz, and at 

 Seville, the last carriage of the royal cortege, had scarcely left the city 

 on its journey south, when the people rose, and having proclaimed the 

 constitution at an end, elected a provisional junta of government, inde- 

 pendent of the self-nominated Constitutional Regency. 



The long occupation of the country by the French, has ever been 

 cited as a favourite argument by the assertors of Spanish liberalism ; 

 such persons, however, who depend on this, whereon to found their 

 opinions, must either know but very little of the subject on which they 

 reason, or wilfully shut their eyes on a fact, which is apparent to every 

 person, who has not received his information of the country, exclusively 

 from her expatriated partisans. The truth is, that when the French 

 Government had completed the task of restoring Ferdinand and the 

 Apostolicals to their full and irresistible sway, they discovered that their 

 utmost vigilance and power were necessary to preserve the country from 

 the exterminating spirit of the re-action, which they had been so instru- 

 mental in giving strength to. The cabinet of the Tuileries professed 

 interference with the affairs of Spain, for the sole purpose of rescuing 

 the king from the hands of a faction, and of restoring to him his legiti- 

 mate and constitutional authority. Their armies crossed the frontier for 

 the avowed salvation of the country from a civil war, and the upshot of 

 the expedition proved, that when they crushed the liberals, they evoked 

 the apostolical faction, a monstrous category, breathing the deadliest 

 asperations for revenge, the sating of which was only to be compassed 

 by an universal massacre of the constitutionalists. To restrian this party 

 from the exercise of the horrible prerogative they assumed to themselves, 



Captain Landabaru, by the hands of the royal guard, was the origin of that which 

 bears his name, and the assassination of the Curate Vinue'sa, who was beaten to death 

 by hammers, while in prison, charged with conspiring against the constitution, 

 occasioned the order so called. Its members wore a small hammer attached to their 

 button-holes, as a tacit demonstration of approval of this murder, which was com- 

 mitted at two o'clock in the day by about forty persons, who broke into the un- 

 happy man's cell, and after the act paraded the streets, proclaiming the deed, and 

 defying the authorities. The reason given by the assassins, was a report then pre- 

 vailing, that the government intended to allow Vinuesa to escpae the penalty of 

 his crime. A demagogue, named Bertram de Lis, had in his pay an armed body of 

 three to four hundred men, who not unfrequently were employed to awe the Cortes 

 during their sittings. This force was quasi recognized by the government. 



