Act in itself was irregular; it was never put
before the Cortes, and the Council of Castile protested against it at
the time.

[Illustration: A CORNER IN OLD MADRID]

This Act, such as it was, was revoked by Charles IV.; but the revocation
was never published, the birth of sons making it immaterial. When,
however, his son Ferdinand VII. was near his end, leaving only two
daughters, he published his father's revocation of the Act of Philip V.,
and appointed his wife, Cristina, Regent during the minority of Isabel
II., then only three years of age.

At no time, then, in its history, has the Salic Law been in use in
Spain: the irregular act of a despotic King was repudiated both by his
grandson and his great-grandson. Nothing, therefore, can be more
ridiculous than the pretension of legitimacy on the part of a pretender
whose party simply attempts to make an illegal innovation, in defiance
of the legitimate kings and of the Council of Castile, a fundamental law
of the monarchy. Carlism, the party of the Church against the nation,
came into existence when, during the first years of Cristina's Regency,
Mendizabal, the patriotic merchant of Cadiz and London, then First
Minister of the Crown, carried out the dismemberment of the religious
orders, and the diversion of their enormous wealth to the use of the
nation. Don Carlos, the brother of Ferdinand VII., thereupon declared
himself the Defender of the Faith and the champion of the extreme
clerical party. _Hinc illae lachrymae_, and two Carlist wars!

The position of the Church, or rather what was called the "Apostolic
party," is intelligible enough, and it is easy also to understand why
Carlism has been preached as a crusade to English Roman Catholics, who
have been induced in both Carlist wars to provide the main part of the
funds which made them possible; but to call Don Carlos "the legitimate
King" is an absurd misnomer.

For the rest, as regards Spain herself and the wishes of her people, it
is perhaps enough to remark that if, after the expulsion of the Bourbons
in 1868, at the time of the Revolution known as "La Gloriosa," when Prim
had refused to think of a republic and declared himself once and always
in favour of a monarchy, and the Crown of proud Spain went a-begging
among the Courts of Europe,--if, at that time of her national need, Don
Carlos was unable to come forward in his celebrated character of
"legitimate Sovereign of the Spanish people," or to raise e