the republican leaders
were mutually jealous and prone to profitless theorizing; the nation
was lacking in the experience which is a prerequisite of
self-government.[844] At home the republic was opposed by the
monarchists of the various groups, by the clergy, and by the extreme
particularists, and abroad it won the recognition of not one nation
save the United States. The presidency of Figueras lasted four months;
that of Pi y Margall, six weeks; that of Salmeron, a similar period;
that of Castelar, about four months (September 7, 1873, to January 3,
1874). Castelar, however, was rather a dictator than a president, and
so was his Conservative successor Serrano. By the beginning of 1874 it
was admitted universally that the only escape from the anomalous
situation in which the nation found itself lay in a restoration of the
legitimist monarchy, in the person of Don Alfonso, son of Isabella II.
The collapse of the republic was as swift and as noiseless as had been
its establishment. The principal agency in it was the army, which, in
December, 1874, declared definitely for Alfonso, after he had pledged
himself to a grant of amnesty and the maintenance of constitutional
government. December 31 a regency ministry under the presidency of
Canovas was announced, and the new reign began with the landing of the
young sovereign at Barcelona, January 10, 1875. Between the premature
and ineffective republicanism of the past year, on the one hand, and
the absolutism of a Carlist government, on the other, the
constitutional monarchy of Alfonso XII. seemed a logical, and to the
mass of the Spanish people, an eminently satisfactory, compromise.[845]

[Footnote 843: Castelar favored a consolidated and
radical republic; Serrano, a consolidated and
conservative republic; Pi y Margall, a federal
republic, on the pattern of the United States;
Pavia, a republic which should be predominantly
military.]

[Footnote 844: In this connection may be mentioned
a remark of General Prim, one of the leading
spirits in the provisional government of 1868. When
asked why at that time he did not establish a
republic his reply was: "It would have been a
republic without republicans." There was no less a
dearth of