and served that illustrious martyr, Louis XVI. and a kind master he was. • Chere ombre royal, recois mon juste hommage, "In the fever of the Revolution, I returned to Spain, and settled at Madrid. A Revolution, Senhor, is a terrible medium of reformation; all governments should render it unnecessary, by the practice of virtue." "How did you find the people of England, Sir?" "I admire the morals of your nation, more than its manners; you preserve the roughnesses of your independence, sometimes, at the expence of your civility; but you are naturally brave and generous. Your protection of the unhappy Bourbons will be recollected with admiration; as those who are kind to the unfortunate will ever be the favorites of Heaven!" 66 As you resided at the capital, Sir," added the Major, "during the first symptoms of the declension of the Spanish throne, you will materially oblige me by communicating the presumed causes of its overthrow." "Your question, Senhor Hidalgo, involves so many points, that I cannot duly satisfy your curiosity but in a very cursory way. The decline of the Spanish monarchy, like the decline of Rome, may be traced up to the corruption of the fountain head of government; for, whatever interested persons may affirm to the contrary, it is as clear as ! that the night succeeds the dominion of the sun, in progression, that if our rulers are not true to themselves, the people will not be true to them. The examples that we may draw from the page of history, and the recent events in France, where the revolutionary embers are scarcely cold, make this position of thinking no longer paradoxical. Charles the Seventh, our late King, was intrinsically a good man, though not a wise Sovereign. Louisa of Parma, was a woman of intrigue, who used the ascendancy she possessed over her husband's mind in so unlimited a sense as to render him little more than an ostensible King, who merely breathed to affix the sign manual of his authority, to her instruments of ambition and profligacy. By the aid of Godoy, her minion, she assumed the disposal of church and military dignities; and while they gratified the surreptitious vermin of a court, the deep murmurs of the nation were unheard. Grey-headed subalterns were com manded by beardless colonels, and the sacred claims of gallantry and service were superseded by the warrant of a strumpet or a grandee! "I am no friend to the Salic law," continued he, laying his hand upon the Major, "but I would have a woman obedient as a wife, and obeyed as a sovereign. When ladies rule a State, they are uniformly governed by men who are generally both wise and honourable, as they are selected to gratify the judgment, and not the passions. When a Monarch is ruled by his wife, she is usually governed by men who make the gratification of her weak nesses their paramount consideration. We have had this exemplified in too many instances to doubt its verity. Our beloved King, Ferdinand the Seventh, when Prince of the Asturias, evinced such generosity of sentiment and love of justice as naturally made the people regard the heir apparent with affection. Though he had his occasional lapses from the injunctions of a stern propriety, yet he never wandered beyond the barriers of moral honor. A Prince should be something more than a mere son of earth; and though he cannot divest nature of her frailties, it is his bounden duty to make them as little intrusive as possible. A private citizen is responsible for his manners, as well as his opinions; and if he deviates from consistency in either too much, he is justly despised. But a Prince must not feel the whisperings of contempt; he is born for his country, and should be a public blessing; and whenever national scorn approaches him, he may consider it as the precursor of his political death. The clergy, who had long subjected Spain with a rod of iron, clung to the Inquisition for sustenance; not from admiration of the establishment, but because it was necessary to protract their power. Since the expulsion of the Jesuits, they have been more than ordinarily jealous in all governmental movements, as a monk has seven eyes when the refectory is in danger. The abridgments which the Church had suffered in other Catholic countries, since the sceptre of Napoleon, had shaken Papal supremacy, inspired them with terror for themselves; and I fear it is to this source, more than any other, that we may ascribe those, bursts of resistance to the usurper, which have been manifested in so many districts of Spain; as we have unhappily found in the proclamations of the Juntas, less attention to the improvement of the general condition of the community, than to the continuance of existing wrongs. The only secret to induce a people to defend a government with zeal, is to make it worth defending. "Our code of laws had ceased to be marked by a due line of demarkation, and were so mutilated and multiplied, that the subject knew not where to tread in perfect security. Similar causes produced different sentences in our highest courts of judicature, and consequently the judges were not sufficiently respected by the nation.-But I am talking to a native of Britain, where character, life, and property are secured by the vigilance of a jury; and those juries must be, unquestionably, wholly independent of the influence of power, as otherwise it would be despotism in masquerade, and a mockery of right. When the organs of the laws become corrupt, and the tribunals cruel in their decrees, it is ominous that the State is sinking under the pressure of its fears. "The awful occurrences of this epocha, should have their proper weight and bearing in the minds of princes, to reclaim the vicious, and arrest the fool in his career of folly.、 "And yet not always on the guilty head Among the number of the illustrious house of Bourbon, who lie scattered like august wrecks upon the face of Nature; turn your eyes to the amiable Duchess D'Angoulesme; the neice of an emperor, and the daughter of a king, demanding homage from her rank and beauty, and the most respectful attention from her sorrows: for it is not in the nature of fortune to reduce the dignity of virtue-driven from the splendour of a throne, to wander from clime to clime, and exist upon a bounty drawn from alien hands-doomed perhaps, to feel those keen, but undescribable emotions of the heart, which will occur to fallen greatness, when they perceive that the administration even of hospitable offices, loses its tone of delicacy in proportion as they decline into the vale of affliction! "But enough of that," continued he, wiping a tear from his cheek. "And now suffer me to give you a little advice at parting-look well to the discipline of your men; the Spaniards are a sober people, and readily disgusted by acts of intemperate weakness. When your soldiers enter the wine-houses, I trust it will be to cheer their spirits, and not madden the brain. Let the veils of our females be inviolate, and cast no ridicule on the monks, whatever may be your predilection in theology, for the rage of an offended priest never sleeps; and above all, remember, when you may enter our chapels, that you are in the presence of the living God!” |