It was said that, if the Pope left his magnificent home at the Vatican, he would come and take up his abode in Spain; but, as the Figaro said:
“The Government of the Queen-Regent will thus put itself completely under the power of Leo XIII., who will be treated like a Sovereign; and he will, they say, be given the Palace of Aranjuez for his residence.”
When the Queen-Regent asked Canovas whom she ought to appoint President of the Ministry, he promptly said, “Sagasta”; but the Congress was a fictitious Congress, for, as Martin Hume says when referring to the Parliament in the earlier part of the century:
“There was not then, and never has been since, any sincerity or reality in the pretended antagonism of the political parties.”
The lack of sincerity in the political opinions, even of those devoted to the monarchy, is shown by Rubio in the speech of Martinez Campos to Silvela; for he said:
“I am neither a Liberal nor a Conservative. I made myself a Liberal because I thought the King wanted the Liberals to come in, and now I am a Conservative because the Queen wanted to give the power to the Conservatives.”
The politicians in the camarillas at the palace always brought forward the phantom of Carlism to scare the Sovereigns from fulfilling their desire of promoting true Parliamentary elections, and true patriots sought to show King Alfonso XII., Queen Maria Cristina, and, later, Alfonso XIII., that those who tried to prevent the country from enjoying this constitutional privilege of going to the polls were only anxious to preserve their own patronage in the nomination of the deputies, and that the monarchy would be adored by the nation if it favoured the reform which had been promised in the days of Ferdinand VII.
The Queen-Regent Maria Cristina was told that the public offices were in the hands of patrons, and it was well known that a recorder in the law courts of Barcelona was blind, but he owed his place to being the brother of the cacique (or influential person) who supported Canovas in Catalonia; and there was also a magistrate in Madrid who could not see, but he, too, had his patron.
The Queen lent a willing ear to the plea of the Chamberlain for reform in these matters, and an inquiry was instituted about the blind recorder at Barcelona. But so powerful is patronage that, although the recorder had been seen to have his hand guided to sign the necessary documents, it was declared that he was not blind; and the informer of the abuse nearly lost his life at the hand of a relative of the man in power who had allowed such a state of things, for he was struck by a sabre at the back of the head, and prostrated senseless to the ground.
Naturally, the wounded man wished to call out his assailant for such an insult, but the Queen-Regent, who sent daily for news of the injured man, begged him, as a favour to herself, to abstain from further steps.