GERMAN INTERFERENCE IN SPAIN.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1880, 14 August 1874, Page 3

GERMAN INTERFERENCE IN SPAIN.

[melbouknb augus avg. 3 .] One of two constructions may be placed upon the action which the German Government has taken in reference to the | Carlist insurrection in Spaiu, while it also admits of both. It may be regarded aa an evidence of a desire or of a determination to pick a quarrel with France, and so precipitate a conflict before she has had time to gather up her strength for that revenge over which she is silently brooding; or it may be part of the general policy of hostility which Prince Bismarck, has felt himself compelled to adopt towards the Papacy. The movement in Spain is an eminently reactionary one, and its triumph would be hailed with delight by the partisans of legitimacy and of ecclesiastical ascendancy in every country in Europe. It would give the Black International a powerful point d'appni, and Spain would becomb the centre of intrigue, as well as an asylum and workshop for the enemies of freedom, and the conspirators against popular rights and liberal institutions, who would flock thither from all the continental nations. Prince Bismarck may not have much sympathy with liberalism, but he has a keen sense of the dangers to be anticipated from allowing the church to govern the state in any part of Europe. If ecclesiasticism could be resuscitated as a political power in the Peninsula, it would materially strengthen the hands of the party which is labouring for the same end in France. Nor can it be doubted that Legitimists in the latter country are affording both moral and material support to ' the Oarlists in Spain. Their leader's means are very limited, and although the ignorant and bigoted peasantry of the Basque provinces are as ready to throw away their lives in his cause as the Highlanders of Scotland were to sacrifice theirs for that of the Pretender in the first half of the last century, the Biscayans are too poor to purchase artillery and victual an army. Yet the funds necessary for both purposes seem to have been forthcoming,. anddt is generally believed that the French authorities have connived at the conveyance of contraband of <var across the Pyrenean frontier as complacently as they wink at the smug- \ g\mg which is always going on in the same quarter. Under such circumstances, it will not be surprising if— as is alleged —Germany should have intimated that, under certain contingencies, she will make a naval demonstration, on behalf of the existing Government in Spain. A German fleet in the Bay of Biscay would also have the effect of preventing the insurgents from receiving supplies from the Carlist Committee which is sitting in London, while its moral effect on the men who are fighting for the maintainance of the Rebublic could not fail to.be considerable. After having induced the French Government to silence the French bishops who were fomenting disaffection in Germany, it cannot be doubted that Prince Bismarck will be equally successful in administering a check to "Charles the Seventh," whose pretentions to the throne of Spain are so ardently espoused by the Ultramontanists on both sides of the Pyrenees, and who bases those pretentions, like "Henry the Fifthof France," upon '• right divine." It would be an evil day for both countries if either of these Pretenders wereto accomplish the ject of his ambition.

H.M.S. Daphne has captured a slaver, with two hundred and seventy five j negroes onboard, going from Mozambique to Madagascar. Many of the slaves had died from want of food, only two instead of eight days' provisions being put on ( board the slaver. ; A letter from a China missionary published in Paris states that there were 80,000 Christians in that country last year, and that 1000 had been strangled, burned, or drowned. He adds that he himself does not expect to escape martyrdom.