"It is a most creditable distinction in Spain, where office is sought almost exclusively for its emoluments, that Lopez has been at three different times a minister of the crown, and retired thrice from that government, of which he was always the most influential member, without any permanent office, or title, or decoration; without even a cross or a riband to display upon his breast, in a country where those favours are most extensively distributed. Even from the premiership of the provisional government, by which high titles and orders were lavishly disseminated amongst the leading instruments of a successful national movement, and from the side of a Queen whose majority had been just proclaimed, he withdrew into private life in a strictly private capacity, without a charge upon the pension list for himself or any of his connexions—without an inscription in the court list or a real of the public money. Five hundred different lucrative and permanent offices were at his disposal, but he preferred a practising lawyer's independence."
This would be rare praise in any country; in Spain it must be almost without parallel. In striking contrast stands the character of Don Luis Gonzalez Bravo, or Brabo, as he affects to write himself, who succeeded Olózaga in the premiership, for which post he united some of the most singular disqualifications ever possessed by a prime minister.
Spain, while imitating the fashions of England and France in dress and suchlike petty particulars, has also thought proper to copy certain political peculiarities of those two countries. Thus, while La Jeune France vapours in long-bearded and belligerent splendour, under the special patronage of a Joinville, and Young England peeps out, gentlemanly and dignified, from beneath the ægis of a less high-born, but, in other respects, equally distinguished character, La Joven España, emulous of their bright example, ranges itself under the patronage of the disreputable editor of a scurrilous journal. It is difficult for us in England to imagine the state of things existing in a country where such a person can head any party or section, however insignificant, in the legislative assembly, and still more difficult to conceive any amount of satirical and vituperative talent placing within his grasp the portfolio of prime minister.
Bravo's first introduction to public notice, was as member of the "Trueno," or Thunder Club—a society that amused itself, of evenings, by molesting peaceable citizens as they returned home to their families, thrashing the serenos or watchmen, and suchlike intellectual and dignified diversion. He got seriously wounded by a pistol-shot on one of these occasions, and we next find him editing the Guirigay or "Slang," a paper remarkable for its personal and unscrupulous tone. For some time its attacks were directed against Christina, to whose expulsion from Spain it is said to have contributed, so great is the influence of newspaper violence in the Peninsula. During the Queen-Dowager's three years' exile, however, Bravo wrote himself round from a violent exaltado progresista, or Radical, into a very decided moderado, or Conservative, in which latter character he entered office. Taxed with his renegade conduct, his defence was a most impudent one, highly characteristic of the man. "No es ridiculo," said he, "estar para siempre el mismo?" Is it not ridiculous to be always the same?
But though he managed to get on while in opposition—and even, by a certain amount of impassioned energy and satirical verve, to place himself at the head of a party of young members, who, although not exceeding fifty in number, turned the scale in many parliamentary contests—his incapacity became glaringly apparent as soon as he took office.
"The prime minister, when he should have been writing sage decrees, was scribbling scurrilous paragraphs; from his portfolio peeped forth old numbers of 'The Slang' and his official robes could not hide his harlequin's jacket. 'Vistan me, dijo Sancho, como quisieren qui de cualquier manera que vaya vestido sere Sancho Panza.' Let them dress me up as they will, quoth Sancho, however I am dressed I shall still be Sancho Panza."
Bravo, however, did as well as another to be the tool of Narvaez, and moreover he was found pliant, which doubtless prevented his being kicked out of office as soon as he got into it. Of course he lost no time in taking care of himself and his friends. His father, who had been dismissed from a government employment for malversation, received the appointment of under-secretary to the Treasury; his wife's brother, a hanger-on at one of the theatres, was made state-groom to the Queen; while a number of other equivocal characters were appointed to the diplomatic corps, and half the political chiefs and public employés in Spain were dismissed to make room for the new premier's friends, including a considerable number of newspaper scribblers. The power of the newspaper press in Spain is enormous, and nearly all the leading politicians in Madrid either are, or have been, editors or proprietors of some one of the principal journals.
The manners and peculiarities of the lower orders in Spain offer a fertile theme, differing as they do in toto from those of the corresponding classes in any other country. They have furnished our author with materials for some amusing chapters. The description of a roadside venta, or inn, and its frequenters, is capital, and reminds us of some of Lewis's admirable pencillings of Spanish life and interiors. The amalgamation of grades of society, which in most countries would be kept carefully distinct, but in the Peninsula hobnob together in perfect good fellowship, the mixture of muleteers and alcaldes, priests and banditti, smugglers and custom-house officers, all sitting in the same smoky room, dipping in the same dish, exchanging the latest intelligence, local and political, forms a strange but a characteristic and perfectly true picture. Apropos of smugglers, here is a small statement worthy the notice of that sensible party in Spain which opposes the introduction of foreign manufactures upon payment of a reasonable duty.
"Spain is, of all European countries, the most helplessly exposed to contrabandist operations. With an ill-paid and sometimes ragged army, and with revenue officers directly exposed to temptation by inadequate salaries, she has 500 miles of Portuguese frontier and nearly 300 of Pyrenean; and with a fleet crumbled into ruins, and no longer of the slightest efficacy, she has 400 miles of Cantabrian and 700 of Mediterranean coast. Four hundred thousand smugglers are constantly engaged in demolishing her absurd fiscal laws, and some 1,600,000 pounds weight of cotton goods alone, are every year illicitly imported."
But things in Spain are now rapidly approaching that happy state when it will become quite unnecessary for the gentlemen contrabandistas to expose their valuable health to the Pyrenean fogs, or their lives in contests with aduaneros. The system is becoming each day more beautifully simple; and, strange as it may seem, the direct road for the importation of contraband goods is through the custom-house. "Bribery is here reduced to the old electioneering simplicity; and the tariff of custom-house corruption is arranged with more uniform regularity, and far more perfectly understood, than the tariff of customs' duties—the difference being, that the customs' revenues may not be paid, but the customs' officers must." The due amount of fee being insinuated into the "itching palm" of the revenue officers, your goods pass with all imaginable facility. By the magic of a four, eight, or sixteen dollar bit, as the case may be, a mist settles over the vision of the complaisant official, and either prevents his seeing at all, or else transforms in the most remarkable manner the objects that pass before him. Bales of manufactured goods assume the appearance of sacks of potatoes and onions—nay, those useful products of the soil are sometimes even supposed to be contained in wooden cases and casks, carefully hooped and nailed; "and huge canvass bales are likewise cleared, and reported to be indubitably filled with the said potatoes, the softness of the packages to the touch arising probably from the fact of their being boiled!"