Mr. Harvey to Mr. Seward.
Sir: The manifesto recently published by General Prim has provoked a decision on the part of his Majesty’s government, which was generally anticipated after that publication. As soon as the authenticity of the paper was ascertained and admitted, the president of the council invited General Prim to a personal interview, and explained to him the impossibility of his Majesty’s government reconciling its asylum and its duty to a neighboring nation with public declarations, which in fact announced a distinct revolutionary purpose, only delayed by circumstances. He concluded by requesting him to seek the hospitality of some other nation. General Prim addressed an explanatory letter to the president of the council the next day, which was answered by a positive reiteration of the decision that had already been announced at the personal meeting.
This subject was brought before the Chamber of Deputies on the 19th instant by an interpellation, and the correspondence was produced as the basis for that proceeding. After two days of animated discussion the chamber voted yesterday [Page 95] to sustain the ministry by a decisive division of 101 against 28. A similar question has been raised in the Chamber of Peers, where the approbation is likely to be equally emphatic, and it is now understood that General Prim must embark for London next week.
There is hardly any serious difference of opinion in the country, or among the representatives of foreign nations, as to the action of the government, or as to the indiscretion of the publication which led to it, no matter by whom or under what circumstances it may have been counselled.
Mr. Aguiar, who is at the head of the ministry, is universally recognized as one of the most liberal-minded and patriotic men in the kingdom, who played a conspicuous part in the revolutions which established the existing order of things and secured to the people of this part of the peninsula, not only the form of constitutional government, but the practical enjoyment of political liberties which are hardly second to those of any other state in Europe. He and the party with which he is identified are the advocates of those principles and ideas which are professed by a better class of the minds in Spain that desire to place their country in the great line of progress which distinguishes our modern civilization.
Hence it is impossible, with any sense of justice, to ascribe this act of the government to another motive than an honorable purpose to discharge its duty in good faith, and to make respected the moral obligation of asylum; the more so as the whole proceeding was voluntary, and not prompted either by diplomatic representation or by pressure on the side of Spain.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.