THE CONSPIRACY OF LAYBACH AND VERONA. THE crash of thrones in Spain and Italy fell on the ears of the conspiring despots of Germany like thunder from a cloudless sky. The subterranean fire they had just stifled under their feet, seemed to roll on underground till it broke out, like the shock of an earthquake, in the two extreme peninsulas of Europe. That Spain and Italy, the chosen seats of despotism, and its sworn ally, superstition, should thus confess the power of the revolutionary mania, was of startling import to the sovereigns. It seemed to betoken the universal and ineradicable nature of the plague. It was like blows received in the house of a friend. Spain had in three centuries sunk from the freest to the most despotic country in Europe. The thunder of the French revolution failed to rouse it. It did not wake til Napoleon's assault stirred its blood and woke its ire, and the insults of a foreign despotism kindled anew the fire in the trampled and besotted spirit of its children. From 1808 till 1813 the war for independence raged with a fury else where unknown. The spirit of patriotism evoked the spirit of liberty, and the sons of Spain, while they fought the battles of their captive King, wisely provided for the security of themselves and their posterity the protection of a free constitution. In 1812, the Cortes which had organized the national strength and roused its spirit, proposed a free and liberal constitution of the mixed monarchical style, based on a liberal suffrage of the people, and sweeping away many of the oppressive institutions which Spain inherited from her Priests and her Kings. Under this constitution the war of liberation was waged; with the Cortes which it created as the representatives of the Spanish nation, the Allied Sovereigns concluded a solemn league against France; and the Emperor of Russia formally acknowledged its entire legitimacy. In 1813, when Napoleon felt the ground slipping beneath his feet, he strove to strengthen his rear by restoring Ferdinand VII. to his throne, on condition of obtaining his support. The Cortes, in full possession of the sovereignty of the nation, refused to admit the King to the exercise of his functions till he had sworn to the constitution. The King crossed the frontier, passed the popularly inclined provinces of Arragon and Catalonia in artful silence, and first at Valencia, in the midst of Elio's troops, dropped the mask. On the 4th of May, 1814, his proclamation-promising a few administrative reformsannulled the constitution. The Cortes, unwilling to take extreme measures, sent a remonstrance-instead of an army-to meet the King. In sullen and dis |