THE AUSTRIAN PRESS.
(Die Neue Freie Presse-Vienna, Oct. 9, 1868)
WHEN in former times a revolutionary outbreak took place in Europe, a people broke its chains and overthrew an unworthy government, a panic seized not only on Cabinets and the so-called Conservative circles, but also on the the business world. It was as if the whole society of Europe had received a terrible blow, and as if it were shaken to its foundation. Statesmen turned pale, the Stocks fell, business stood still, and everybody took to measures of precaution, as if it were requisite to protect oneself from a conflagration threatening all. The way in which the news of the expulsion of Queen Isabella from Spain and the victory of the revolution in that country was received by the Governments and public opinion in Europe, announces a great and powerful advance. In former times the Cabinets would have immediately deliberated how the conflagration in the Peninsula could be best extinguished, and they would not have had the least scruple in menacing the revolutionary country, in the name of the violated rights of crown and altar, with punishment by intervention. But during the last twenty years the policy of Governments as well as of public opinion has undergone a wholesome change. Instead of being horrified at the revolution in Spain, there is an evident feeling of satisfaction that a reactionary, blind, absolutist Government has been overthrown. People have become convinced that a bad, worthless Government is a far greater evil than a transitory revolution, and nowhere is there any other wish entertained than that the Spanish people may succeed in definitely constituting themselves in liberty. The Spanish revolution is the first in Europe which was greeted by the European exchanges with a rise in the funds.

Like public opinion, the Governments also assumed a good attitude. The diplomacy of the cabinets allowed the Bourbons to fall as the country which was oppressed by them let them fall. No ambassadors were recalled from Madrid ; they all received instructions to remain at their posts and to enter into communication with the provisional Government. These are signs of the times which are deserving of notice. It cannot be denied, it is true, that the secret wish to neutralise the activity of the Bonapartist Government in Spain by a state of revolution in Spain, and thereby to obtain a sort of guarantee of the maintenance of peace in Europe, may have an essential share in this recognition of the revolution of the revolution in Spain. ; but the progress, of which all this is the testimony, is none the less for that. By the European cabinets accepting the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy, and hastening to declare that they left the Spanish people to constitute themselves according to their own free will, they recognised what formerly they shuddered at—the right of a nation to decide its own destiny, the right of revolution. This is a great change in comparison with former times; thus the new right, which was to be inaugurated by the peace of 1856 has ceased to be a mere theory. The new right has been put in practice, and will now be exercised by all sovereigns, whether they received their crown from a plebiscite or from the Table of the Lord. That this is apostasy according to the old ideas about monarchs we readily admit to the Conservatives and we quite understand their grief at such a falling off. But they should draw a lesson from such facts—viz., that kings have only yielded to an inevitable necessity, and that it is no longer possible to drive peoples with a stick like a flock of sheeр.

(Die Presse-Vienna.)
THE ineffectiveness of so many Spanish risings has caused a great number of Liberal papers to anticipate very little from the Cadiz pronunciamiento, and to openly express the fear that it will all end again in a change of persons without any radical alteration. There is indisputably good cause for this anxiety…. But there is a treasure which Spain possesses in the municipal feeling of her population and her excellent parishional institutions the value of which has been greatly underrated. They work like a “steal-bath,” by means of which the people can always rejuvenate itself; while, on the other hand, the greatest revolutions have taken place in France, without any one thinking of the complete destruction of municipal life. The French have twice had the Republic, but not the smallest village could elect its Brown Jones without the intervention of the Government… In Spain, on the contrary, the foundation of all ideas of liberty, municipal liberty, is not extinct. That wonderful Cortes Constitution of 1812, which had no other object but to bring royalty to nothing while acknowledging its indispensability, was exemplary with respect to municipal and provincial administration. The dispute as to the attributes of the ayuntamientos (common councils) is the thread of Ariadne in the last quarter of a century of Spanish history. Queen Christina, in 1840, wishing to rob the ayuntamientos of their self-government after the model of France, gave to the September revolution, which ended with the proclamation of the regency of Espartero….And this consciousness of local self-government which preserves the individual from becoming a sacrifice ot the Moloch of the “State idea” shows itself so plainly in the acts of the late revolution, that our hopes for ist efficaciousness increase from day to day.