which can raise money to aid in warring against the Union, and yet will not liquidate its bonds, which are held by the English allies of American rebels.  This does not promise much for the future of Spain, and she may find her armies brought to a stand in Mexico from the want of money; and thus will be repeated the blunder of the sixteenth century, when the victories of the Spaniards in the Low Countries were made fruitless because their sovereign was unable to pay his soldiers, and so they became mutineers at the very time when it was most requisite that their loyalty should be perfect, in order that the Castilian ascendency might be entirely restored.  Spain walks in a circle, and she repeats the follies of her past with a pertinacity that would seem to indicate, that, while she has forgotten everything, she has learned nothing.

This third revival of Spain has been attended with a liberal exhibition of the same follies which we know it was her custom to display after preceding revivals.  Instead of attending to her internal affairs, which demanded all her attention and the use of all her means, she has plunged into the great sea of foreign politics, with the view, it should seem, of being admitted formally into the list of leading European Powers.  That she should desire a first place is by no means discreditable to her; but her manner of seeking it is to the last degree childish, and unworthy of a country that has had so much experience.  That place which she seeks can never long be denied to any European nation which is really strong, and modern strength does not consist merely in great fleets and armies, to be employed in attacking the weak, and in promoting a system of intervention in the affairs of foreign countries.  Such, however, is not the opinion of Spanish statesmen, if they are to be judged by their actions.  No sooner did Spain begin to feel her strength, than she determined to make other countries feel it, in a very disagreeable fashion.  She directed her attention to Italy, and nothing but a salutary dread of Napoleon III prevented her from becoming the champion of all the tyrants and abuses of that country.  It was at one time supposed that she meant to revive her pretensions to territorial rule in the Italian Peninsula, and to contend for the restoration of the state of things which there ended with the ending of the Austro-Burgundian rule of the Spanish Empire in 1700; and though it would have been preposterous to have thought such pretensions possible in the case of any other country,—­as preposterous as it would be to suppose England capable of thinking of the restoration of her power over the United States,—­yet it was perfectly reasonable to believe that Spain would revive claims that were barred by the lapse of one hundred and fifty years.  No statute of limitations is known to her, and what she has held once she thinks herself entitled to reclaim on any day through all time.  Weakness may prevent her from enforcing