The first consequences of a Septembrist pronunciamiento would probably be the deposition of the Queen and the scattering of the Chartists; and in this case it is easy to conceive the latter beholding in an alliance with the Miguelite party their sole chance of escape from democracy, and from a destruction of the numerous interests they have acquired during their many years of power. It is no unfair inference that Costa Cabral, when he caused himself, shortly after his arrival in London, to be presented to Don Miguel in a particularly public place, anticipated the probability of some such events as we have just sketched, and thus indicated, to his friends and enemies, the new service to which he might one day be disposed to devote his political talents.
The intricate and suggestive complications of Peninsular politics offer a wide field for speculation; but of this we are not at present disposed further to avail ourselves, our object being to elucidate facts rather than to theorise or indulge in predictions with respect to two countries by whose political eccentricities more competent prophets than ourselves have, upon so many occasions during the last twenty years, been puzzled and led astray. We sincerely wish that the governments of Spain and Portugal were now in the hands of men capable of conciliating all parties, and of averting future convulsions--of men sufficiently able and patriotic to conceive and carry out measures adapted to the character, temper, and wants of the two nations. If, by what we should be compelled to look upon almost as a miracle, such a state of things came about in the Peninsula, we should be far indeed from desiring to see it disturbed, and discord again introduced into the land, for the vindication of the principle of legitimacy, respectable though we hold that to be. But if Spain and Portugal are to continue a byword among the nations, the focus of administrative abuses and oligarchical tyranny; if the lower classes of society in those countries, by nature brave and generous, are to remain degraded into the playthings of egotistical adventurers, whilst the more respectable and intelligent portion of the higher orders stands aloof in disgust from the orgies of misgovernment; if this state of things is to endure, without prospect of amendment, until the masses throw themselves into the arms of the apostles of democracy--who, it were vain to deny, gain ground in the Peninsula--then, we ask, before it comes to that, would it not be well to give a chance to parties and to men whose character and principles at least unite some elements of stability, and who, whatever reliance may be placed on their promises for the future, candidly admit their past faults and errors? Assuredly those nations incur a heavy responsibility, and but poorly prove their attachment to the cause of constitutional freedom, who avail themselves of superior force to detain feeble allies beneath the yoke of intolerable abuses.