The Carlists are in a great state of mind because
a Spanish steamer has seized an English vessel off the coast laden with arms for the Carlists. They declare that here is a cases belli, a grand crime, an act of piracy, and we know not what else. Are American vessels entitled to land arms notoriously intended for Fenians in the Cove of Cork? If the vessel was seized out of Spanish waters, Spain has, of course, been guilty of an act she must explain ; but if she was within them, as her Government asserts, she was within her municipal authority, which prohibits aid to rebels by foreigners, as well as by anybody else. As to the illegal side of the question, we ought at least to be fair, and as we, accidentally or otherwise, helped to put down the Intraneigentes, we ought not to murmur much when our help, forwarded to the other aide, is put down also. Our interest is not the success of Don Carlos or General Contreras, but of the moderate and Conservative Republican Government of Madrid. We cannot help them overtly, because there is not life enough in us to help anybody, but we can at least abstain from taking sides with the Clerical party. Have we not had trouble enough with the Southern slaveowners, that we must help a man who has no raison d'être except his presumed devotion to the Papacy?
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