This document, however, is the production of M. Garrido, who belongs to the extreme Left of European opinion on these matters, as may be imagined when I mention that his valuable book on Spain was translated into German, by Arnold Ruge, the famous editor of the Hallischen Jahrbücher. More important, as a sign of what is to happen, are the acts of the Provisional Government, and the language of its circular to its diplomatic agents. It may be that some reaction may take place, but for many a day Spanish religious reactions have been growing weaker and weaker. The reaction after 1812 brought back the Inquisition. The reaction after 1837 did not even replace in the constitution of 1845 the declarations as to the truth of the Roman Catholic religion, which were made by the democrats of 1812. The reaction after 1854 brought an educational law in the interests of the priests, but it is very doubtful how far it has been working really in their interests. There are large districts in Spain, where the Church has altogether lost its hold over the middle class, and it would not be impossible to point to persons, who have hitherto upheld the existing order of things, not because they have the faintest belief in the established creed, but because they did not want to be bored by controversy as to matters about which they care nothing. I am firmly persuaded that the only chance that really earnest Roman Catholicism, the Catholicism of Eugénie de Guérin or of the Récit d'une sœur, has, is to be found in the total and immediate abolition of every unjust privilege which the Church at this moment possesses. Where is the Roman Church stronger at this moment than it is in Poland? Take away from the mass of Spanish Catholics those who care for none of these things, and only want a quiet life, those whose abject and stupid superstition does not rise above the lowest forms of heathenism, and those whose religion, as the Pall Mall Gazette said of Queen Isabella's the other day, is merely a state of permanent hysterics -and how many Catholics will you have left between Cadiz and the Bidassoa?

I very much doubt if any one in England is competent to give an opinion as to the real views of the Spanish secular clergy, but I was told in 1864, by a very able Spanish ecclesiastic, whose own opinions were highly liberal, that a broad distinction must be drawn between them and the Camarilla which was under Roman influence. The regular clergy in Spain, to which we have seen frequent allusions in the newspapers lately, must be very few in number. I have seen no very recent statistics, but I cannot help thinking that there is a vast deal of exaggeration and mistake in the sweeping statements which we have seen about the suppression of the monasteries, and that for monasteries we should read convents, mission-houses, and seminaries. The work of Henry VIII. was done to a great extent in Spain a generation ago by Mendizabal.

PORTUGAL.—The agitations of her great neighbour do not appear to have in any way affected Portugal, which pursues, under a very tolerable government, its peaceful though not very brilliant career. Peaceful, I say, with reference to foreign States, for she has not been wholly exempt during the year 1868 from slight internal disturbances.

Towards the end of last year a bill was introduced into the Chambers, for the purpose of altering the taxes on consumption. This measure was excessively unpopular, but in spite of its unpopularity it was pushed through by M. Casal Ribeiro's energy. It came into operation on the 1st of January, and excited no small dissatisfaction in various parts of the country. At Lisbon several hundred persons went in procession to present a petition to the King against it. Their procession was interrupted by the military, and the King, alarmed or annoyed at so violent a measure, immediately dismissed his Ministers, and trusted the formation of a new government to Count d'Avila. He immediately dissolved, and succeeded in throwing out most of the leading supporters of his predecessor. This did not avail him much, and he had the usual short tenure of Portuguese Prime Ministers.

The majority which supported his Conservative-Liberal administration was not very large and not very staunch. The Duke of Loulé opposed it in the House of Peers, and after some skirmishing, its six months' tenure of office came to an end. A new administration seemed at first about to be formed under this personage, but the King eventually sent for the Marquis Sa da Bandeira, who, with the exception perhaps of Saldanha, is the most popular man in the country, possessing very considerable influence in the army, which, although not very famous abroad, is a powerful political ally in Portugal.

Portugal has long had a bad eminence in connexion with the Slave Trade, and in the Slave-Trade Reports, Class B, presented this year, there is a curious correspondence between Lord Stanley and Sir A. Paget, about a certain Senhor Leivas, who is said, by our consul at Loanda,1 writing under date 14th December 1866, to be the last person in Europe who persists systematically, "notwithstanding his heavy losses, in despatching slave vessels to that part of the coast of Africa.” Paget, however, it appears, could hear nothing of Senhor Leivas, and we may trust that a later despatch from Loanda, which says that he has, once for all, abandoned the traffic, may be relied on as correct.

Sir A.

HOLLAND.—I pointed out last year some curious points of resemblance between the political situation in England and in Holland. More fortunate than ourselves, the Dutch came in the summer of this year once more under the control of a Liberal Government, not, however, until two dissolutions, and some talk of a third, had strained the constitutional machine in a very formidable way. The Liberal Government which came. into power is neither so strong nor altogether so wisely composed as we might wish. Neither of the two leaders of Dutch Liberal opinion, Thorbecke, the head of the old, nor Franssen van de Putte, whom, I think, I may fairly call the head of the

1 Slave-Trade Reports, Class A, 1868.

B

new school, forms part of it, although the former acts as a sort of "presiding genius." People say at the Hague that "the brains of the Ministry are at Assen," which is the place that returns Thorbecke. The nominal head of the Cabinet is Van Bosse, who has the portfolio of Finance, and perhaps the most important of the other Ministers are Mr. de Wal, who has charge of the colonies, and Mr. Fock, the Home Minister, both of them able men. The parliamentary majority which follows these leaders is not very great. The colonial question is as far from settlement as ever, the chief battle raging for the moment around the length of time for which leases should be given to private adventurers in Java, so as to enable them to compete with the Government culture. The famous education law of 1857 is of course now as ever attacked by the ultra-Conservative party, and is looked on of late somewhat coldly by a certain section of the Liberals who take a view pretty much akin to that which is advocated by the Spectator newspaper amongst ourselves with regard to Irish education.

The Dutch political novel, of which I spoke last year as throwing considerable light upon the colonial question in Java, has now been translated into English.1 It represents the views of the ultra-radical party amongst Dutch colonial reformers, and the only good review of it which I have chanced to see, which appeared in the Scotsman, and was evidently written by some one who had an amount of information about Java very rare in this country, stated the conservative view with remarkable force and clearness.

The Cologne Gazette treats the story of a triple commercial and political alliance between France, Belgium, and Holland, as a mere tale of the sea-serpent, and indeed, it is difficult to see what the two smaller States have to gain by such an alliance, which has its origin probably partly in the imagination of Parisian journalists, and partly in the very unne

1 Max Havelaar; or, The Coffee-Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company. By Multatuli. Translated by Baron A. Nahuys. Edinburgh.

cessary alarm which was excited in Holland by the events. of 1866.

BELGIUM.—The daily telegrams about the health of the Crown Prince of Belgium which have been flying over Europe, show how deep the interest in the popular mind about kings and dynasties still is; for the number of able editors who forgot the existence of the Count of Flanders, married only last year to a princess of Hohenzollern, and, following the lead of a Vienna paper, worked themselves into a state of alarm about the Belgian succession, cannot have been very great. Or is it that the attachment of European politicians to the palace once tenanted by the wise Leopold, is a cat-like attachment, which survives after the old occupant has passed away? Every one must regret the calamity that has fallen upon people so estimable as the King of Belgium and his Queen, but I wish that our journals would keep us better posted up with regard to events in Belgium which have a wider interest. What is really most interesting to Englishmen in the state of that country, is the gradual spread in the ranks of the Liberal party of the soundest and most philosophical ideas in all that relates to politics and trade. I should like to have seen, in some English newspaper, a full account of the very interesting protest made last spring by M. Couvreur against the enormous expense of the army, which Belgium in spite of her neutrality thinks it necessary to keep up; I should like to hear something about the movement that is going on in favour of the abolition of Custom-houses. With regard to the last movement, I may read a passage which I find in the report from our consul at Antwerp, presented last February :

"The Liberal tendency evinced of late years in Belgium with respect to commercial questions has been in the main warmly approved and sustained by public opinion at Antwerp. Differences of view, no doubt, exist with regard to the extent to which the principles of free trade and financial reform