670 SPAIN AND HER FACTIONS. 



Asturias, a long minority will offer too favourable and too frequent op- 

 portunities, to the disturbers, for the pursuance of their plans. Should 

 the king die without male issue, a revolution will no longer be a matter 

 of conjecture, but a moral certainty; for it requires, even now, the 

 utmost vigilance on the part of the government, and the strongest exer<* 

 cise of the little energy they possess, to restrain the Carlists ; and secret 

 means, it is said, have been more than once detected, which aimed at 

 the king's life. Whether this be true or not, it is manifestly the inte- 

 rest of the Carlists, that the royal demise should take place, when the 

 abrogation of the Salic law should be the only obstacle to the accession 

 of Don Carlos. Thus, the only circumstance by which the peace of the 

 kingdom has the slightest chance of being preserved, that of the king's 

 existence lingering until a son of his, yet unborn, arrive at the age of 

 puberty, is one connected with such contingencies, as to render its oc- 

 currence of the remotest probability. The resources of the apostolicals 

 are, at present, the only means the government can avail themselves of, 

 to meet any extraordinary emergency, and may at any time be as dan- 

 gerous, as they have lately been found useful. The progress of the 

 constitutionalists, in the course of last year (1831), was mainly arrested 

 by this assistance, and , the exertions of the royalist volunteers : for so 

 dilapidated were the revenues of the monarchy, that the regular service 

 was found both insufficient and unworthy of reliance. The result of 

 this was felt immediately: military commissions, and prevotal courts 

 were instituted, and arbitrary arrests took place in every part of the 

 Peninsula ; and several atrocious executions served to shew that the 

 ministry were for the conjuncture, acting under the dictation of the 

 apostolicals. These events have practically illustrated, beyond question, 

 the impossibility of continued tranquillity to the nation, in obedience to 

 the actual government. The late occurrences in Europe, and those 

 which, in the course of things, must inevitably take place, have and will 

 strengthen and encourage the liberals, without infusing any mediatory 

 relaxation into the policy of the apostolicals. The government, which 

 now is endeavouring to improve the natural resources of the country, 

 by making and maintaining roads, contracting for the projection and 

 completion of canals, instituting diligence companies, fostering infant 

 manufactories, and, by various other beneficial innovations, have shewn 

 a spirit, which, though slow in action, is worthy of commendation, will 

 inevitably find themselves, ere long, between a choice of concessions to 

 liberals, or fraternization with the apostolicals. Half measures will no 

 longer be tenable : at such a period, they will have more than the dis- 

 advantages of ultraism, with no prospect of a beneficial issue. 



It would seem an impossibility that the king or his government can 

 ever again connect themselves with the liberals with the men, whom, 

 under the denomination af revolutionists, they have held up to the 

 execration of the nation ; whom they have aggrieved by every variety 

 of insult and calamitous visitation ; and most of whose leaders, to whom 

 the king and the country are under obligations for life and freedom, are 

 now wandering abroad under the humble stigma of outlawry, and re- 

 commended, with diplomatic iteration, to the especial persecution of 

 those foreign governments to whose protection, under whose aegis of 

 international hospitality and neutrality, they may have consigned them- 

 selves. Such an amalgamation would give the lie to eight years of 

 government, during which the right divine has been vindicated by 



