ervice, and the memory of Castelar stands as
high to-day as ever it did in the respectful admiration of his
fellow-countrymen.

CHAPTER IX

POLITICAL GOVERNMENT

The Government of Spain ever since the restoration of Don Alfonso XII.
has been in reality what it was only in name before--a constitutional
monarchy. During the first years of the young King's reign, Canovas del
Castillo being Prime Minister, there was a distinctly reactionary
tendency from the Liberalism of Prim and the revolutionary party of
1868. It was almost impossible that it should be otherwise, considering
the wild tumult of the varying opinions and the experiments in
government that the country had passed through; and some of the
difficulties of the situation to-day are no doubt due to the concessions
made to the ultra-Conservative party in the re-introduction of the
religious orders, which had been suppressed during the regency of
Cristina, and had never been tolerated even during the reign of the
_piadosa_, Isabel II.

Prim had, from the first moment that the success of the Revolution was
assured and the Queen and her _camarilla_ had crossed the frontier to
seek asylum in France, declared for a constitutional monarchy. "How can
you have a monarchy without a king?" he was asked by Castelar. "How can
you have a republic without republicans!" was his reply. He might have
made himself king or military dictator, but he wanted to be neither; nor
would he hear of Montpensier, to whom Topete and Serrano had pledged
themselves.

The House of Savoy was the next heir to the Spanish throne, had the
Bourbons become extinct, and to it the first glances of the Spanish
king-maker were directed, but difficulties arose from the dislike of the
Duke of Aosta himself to the scheme. A prince of some Liberal country
was what was wanted: there was even some talk of offering the crown to
the English Duke of Edinburgh, while one party dreamed of an Iberian
amalgamation, and suggested Dom Luis of Portugal or his father Dom
Ferdinand, the former regent. The candidature of Prince Leopold of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who was a Roman Catholic, was looked upon with
a certain amount of favour, but at the eleventh hour Napoleon III. made
this scheme a pretext for the quarrel with Prussia which led to the
fateful war of 1870 and 1871. Eventually, almost two years after the
outbreak of the Revolution, Amadeo of Savoy was chosen by the Cortes at
Madrid by a majority of o