When the Spanish-American republics achieved their independence of Spanish monarchical rule, the leading men and the whole people were not only ignorant of the true principles of trade and industry, but they retained, by tradition and by habit, an hereditary attachment to all that was unsound in the old Spanish colonial policy, and to all that was bigoted in the Church. Prejudice and bigotry are, alas! not easily eradicated. This was especially true in regard to Mexico; and to this ignorance and to this intolerance may we assuredly ascribe the impotent condition of that naturally rich and still extensive republic.

tyranny-the doctrine of the Church was persecu- | tellect-were the principles of Spanish authority tion-the maxim of trade was monopoly. The in America. The frustration of industry, and long duration of those fallacies rendered them, in the non-existence of administrative capacity, were Spanish wisdom, venerable. The Spaniards be- chiefly owing to the despotism of the Governlieved the precious treasures of the New World ment; ignorance in the people and intolerance exhaustless. They imagined their power invin- in religion were owing and are owing to the cible. Their ambition and pride measured no Church and its priesthood. limits. The consequent wars in Europe, and the retention of the Indies, diminished the number of inhabitants and demoralised the remaining population. The country became exhausted by its decreased powers of production at home and by the plunder of its fleets by the enemy. The Spanish troops were ever brave, yet they were ill-paid, badly fed, and wretchedly clothed. They were skilfully disciplined and gallantly commanded, but they were generally defeated. The people of the United Provinces, of a mere fragment of Spanish dominion, a marsh, a debris of river-deposits and sea-sands, assumed and effected independence, and constructed fleets which swept those of their former tyrants from off the ocean. Spain, by insulting, roused and organised the power of other nations. Of England and France, Spain was especially jealous. England, and afterwards Holland, became her most formidable naval rival. The precious metals of America enervated the Spaniards; the spirit of industry, trade, and navigation rendered the English and Dutch active, hardy, bold, and victorious.

When the colonies of Spain revolted against the crown, they engaged in their cause, in like manner as every people struggling for liberty have and ever will, the most generous sympathies of the intelligent, the virtuous, and the liberal minds of Europe and of Anglo-America. It was hoped that they would rival the bold and successful resistance of the British provinces to a domination which, though often severe and unjust, was paternal compared to the royal absolutism and the hierarchical bondage of the Crown and Church of Spain. It was believed that, if once independent, their new governments, animated by the success and instructed by the example of the Anglo-American Republic, would have advanced steadily in political liberty and religious freedom, in the education of the people, in cultivating the great agricultural, mineral, and commercial resources of their vast territories, and in instituting free, enlightened, and practical governments.

But the people of Europe had not examined, in short it was difficult for them to understand, the condition, morally and physically, of the Spanish people in America. Disappointment accordingly has been the result in respect to the republics of Mexico, and of Central and South America. George Canning first acknowledged that England had added new, free, and independent nations to the constitutional states of the world. Had he lived a few years longer, no one would have more truly deplored the sad progress of those countries. Spain commenced by planting the elements of future weakness and dissolution in her colonies. Arbitrary civil and military powers, injustice and cruelty to the natives-an ecclesiastical tyranny, which fascinated the senses and paralysed the in

No state retains power, or commands the respect of other nations, which sinks to the degradation of national bankruptcy, until such state recovers her credit and discharges her national obligations. Spain has fallen into the humiliation of public insolvency, and has not yet risen to the proud ascendancy of paying her creditors. Holland, through all her perils, has maintained the honour of meeting her accountabilities, and preserving faith in her transactions.

We need not, after this brief statement, be surprised that Spain lost her colonies; and when we examine the systems of finance, commerce, and administration of Spain, we can readily account for the comparatively powerless condition of that kingdom at the present time among the nations of Europe. Spain, with all her elements of wealth, industry, commerce, navigation and power, was in the beginning of 1850, and long before that year, in the scale of nations far more feeble than Holland. Spain occupies a surface nearly one-half greater than all the British Isles, with a soil capable of yielding probably nearly double the value of agricultural produce. Spain has rich minerals of coal, iron, lead, quicksilver and the precious metals, with an area eleven times as great as that of all the Dutch provinces. The climate of the latter is also cold and humid, and the soil without minerals and without building-materials. If in January, 1852, Spain and Holland had been left to themselves, in the event of a warlike contention, which of the two nations would have been the most likely to overcome the other? Public opinion would certainly decide in favour of Holland. The example of these two nations is an elucidation of the power or weakness of countries, in consequence of the wisdom and industry, or the folly and negligence of man, in opposition to natural advantages or obstructions. Holland prospered and attained power under a system of religious, political and commercial freedom. Spain has sunk into comparative degradation under a religious and political despotism, and the most restrictive and prohibitive commercial laws. Spain has proved, in consequence, impracticable in the administration of a constitutional government, and

wheat, cotton, flax and hemp, sugar, coffee, indigo and madder, the orange, the lemon and cork tree, fruit and timber-trees of various kinds have been and may be grown on the soils of Spain. Quicksilver, gold, silver, iron, coal, antimony, copperas, sulphur, cobalt, loadstone and salt, abound in greater or less quantities in this highly-favoured country. But a despotic or incompetent Government and a bigoted and oppressive Church have held in degradation a country which the Creator has blessed with the most extraordinary and profitable resources. Spain might easily maintain double the number of inhabitants which now live in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that the population of Spain does not at present exceed 14,000,000 inhabitants.

unable to adjust either her financial or commercial | the Mediterranean, are remarkably fertile, and laws; in short, unfit to adapt her government and yield almost every known European production. her institutions to the progress, the necessities and Besides the vine, olive, and mulberry, rice, maize, the civilisation of the age. Yet there are good materials in Spain, especially among the rural and the industriously disposed of the urban people. Let Spain have a firm, stable and just Government, a liberal commercial system, a financial reformation, a wise administration of the laws, complete religious toleration, domestic tranquillity, and that magnificent kingdom may still rise high in position among the nations of Europe. We believe, also, that Spain has gained much security against foreign intrigue by the downfall of the Orleans dynasty; and it would be wise policy on the part of the British and Spanish Governments to re-establish a mutual friendly understanding. But let there be no entangling alliances, no commercial treaties. Let there be pacific relations under no written bond. Both may profit by this policy: Great Britain will-Spain, with a wise policy, may.

The geographical position of Spain is superior to that of most countries in Europe, extending from 36 degrees 40 min. to 43 degrees 34 min. north. In the number of her harbours and inlets of the sea Spain possesses many advantages over France. Her climate is tempered by the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. But such is the neglected and imperfect state of drainage in the towns, the filthiness of the streets, and the dwellings of the people, that the country has frequently been ravaged by the plague, and not many years since by the Asiatic cholera. The lofty Pyrenees are regarded as a bulwark against France on the north, although they proved no defence against the armies of Napoleon. The country has long since been denuded of its woods, and its agriculture is in a worse condition than that of any other in Europe-Portugal, perhaps, excepted. But during the occupation of the Andalusian provinces by the Moors, no country was more highly cultivated than the fertile soils which are drained by the Guadalquiver and other rivers of the Moorish kingdom. Nothing has been done for the improvement of navigation; while the roads, with some leading exceptions, remain in a wretched condition. Railways have scarcely been attempted. But the Spanish people who do not belong to the nobility or ecclesiastics are by no means intractable; and, if properly instructed, would generally be industrious. In Catalonia and north-east of the Ebro, we find the greatest industry and the most thriving population.

Several canals have been commenced, but it may almost be said that none have been completed. Under Charles V., a canal was begun to improve the navigation of the Ebro, and although it would prove of immense commercial usefulness and profit, it has never been completed.

Although Spain is intersected by mountainous ridges, the highlands are usually verdant and adapted to pasture. The valleys of Alcarria, Sierra Morena, Guadalaxarra, Guadalquiver, the Ebro, Biscay, Navarra, Malaga, Toledo, and the region extending from Seville, behind Cadiz to

We have said that Spain lost her liberties under the first of the Bourbons, Philippe V., who was placed on the throne by his grandfather, Louis XIV., despite the wars of William and Anne.

The Cortes were afterwards only assembled at very long intervals, not for free deliberative purposes, but for mere form. The Council of State and the Council of Castille being under the direction of, and the members appointed by, the king, formed no obstacle to the absolute will of the monarch.* The gold of South America purchased luxurious ease at home; the first offices in the State were sold to the highest bidder; industry and enterprise languished; commerce was destroyed by barbarous restrictions; the population decreased from idleness, and from the superstition and pride of the grandees, and even hidalgos,† who preferred their junior sons being ecclesiastics, or even monks, and imprisoning their daughters; in convents, rather than having either the one or the other engaged in industrious, rational and natural occupations; agriculture was neglected ;§ the national power sunk;

*That terrible political instrument, the Inquisition, under the mask of religion, rendered the executive government of Spain omnipotent within its jurisdiction. In respect to the lower classes and rural population, they always in their ignorance enjoyed at least passive security.

The hidalgos form a species of squirearchy, and claim noble alliance.

Late authorities state that there is now a general detestation of monks, and, for a long time, a decided repugnance on the part of parents to immuring their daughters in con

vents.

§ In the Cortes of 1822 there were grandees and ecclesiastics among the most patriotic members. grandees of Spain, began when Philippe the Second esta The degradation, and, in fact, the enslavement of the

blished an Escurial Attendance at Madrid, as the metropolis, in the most inconvenient barren portion of the kingdom. By the forms of the Court, the nobility of Spain have ever since been chained to Madrid, while their estates have been running waste, their fortunes diminishing, their minds debased and enslaved to the Court, and the whole country declining in its has always been to maintain a broad separation between the agriculture and general industry. The object of the Court nobility and the people. It was the conviction of the degrading subjection which retained them at Madrid, far from their estates, and in comparative poverty, that induced so many of the nobility to join the Liberals of 1822. The corporations of the great orders of knighthood, which had long enjoyed vast possessions and great privileges, consisted usually of the younger sons of the nobility. The grandees who live on their estates rank high in mind, character, and appearance above the courtiers.

Spain lost her rank among nations, and was finally | of the public service; appoints public officers, and subdued by Napoleon. The old dynasty after- confers honours and distinctions on all classes; names wards, by the assistance of England, was re-esta- and dismisses his ministers without distinction. blished; but the South American colonies revolted, and, in 1820, an abortive effort was attempted to restore the Cortes with all the privileges of that once powerful assembly. With the aid of France Ferdinand was not only enabled to put down the popular movement, but to re-establish a sway fully as absolute as was exercised by the most despotic of his predecessors.

The constitutional party, from 1820 to 1823, were carried forward in their views of government to an impracticable extreme. The elements of a durable constitution, such as they conceived, neither did nor does exist in any country, far less in Spain. The adoption of universal suffrage, only one legislative (representative) house, from which the nobles, clergy, and the wealthy and influential bodies were to be excluded, and rendering the veto of the monarch temporary, formed certainly a most visionary impracticable conception in a country where the mass of the people are illiterate, superstitious, and accustomed to reverence and obey their clergy, and to respect and depend on the higher ranks.

On the death of Ferdinand VII., the Liberal party, so called, acquired an ascendancy; the Cortes was restored, with limited powers, but without the right of initiating legislative measures.

By royal decree of the 13th April, 1834, a constitution was published, but it was found impracticable; and another form of government was substituted, and promulgated in 1837. In its construction this constitution appears sufficiently liberal. The Cortes consists of two bodies, the Senate and the Congress of Deputies. The number of the senators is three-fifths of the deputies, and the latter are chosen by the king from a triple list proposed by the electors of each province, who also return one senator at least. The sons of the king and the immediate heir of the throne are senators by right at the age of twenty-five years. Each province has the right to return one deputy at least, for each 50,000 inhabitants; and all taxes and matters relating to the revenue are first prepared by the deputies, and, if altered in the senate, they receive the royal assent in the form which may afterwards be definitively approved of by the deputies.

The person of the king or queen is sacred and inviolable, and not subject to responsibility; the ministers alone are responsible; the executive power resides in the king, who sanctions and promulgates the laws. The king also, by writ, issues decrees, regulations and instructions which may be conducive to the execution of the laws; provides that justice be promptly and efficiently dispensed throughout the kingdom; pardons criminals, according to the provisions of the law; declares war and makes peace, afterwards giving an account and document to the Cortes; disposes of the military forces of the country; conducts the diplomatic and commercial relations with other states; provides for the coinage of money; decrees the application of the funds destined for each branch

The king is obliged to be authorised by law to alienate, to grant, or to exchange any part of the Spanish territory; to admit foreign troops into the kingdom; to ratify treaties of offensive alliance, special treaties and treaties of commerce, and treaties which stipulate to give assistance to any foreign power; to absent himself from the kingdom; to contract matrimony, and to permit these who may be called to the throne to enter into that state; to abdicate the throne in favour of his immediate successor.

The income of the king and royal family is to be settled by the Cortes at the commencement of each reign.

All commands or dispositions by the sovereign shall be signed by the respective ministers; and no public functionary is to execute such orders if not thus signed.

The ministers may be senators or deputies, and take part in the discussions of the two legislative bodies, but they are permitted to vote in that body only to which they belong.

To the tribunals and judges alone belongs the power to apply the law in civil and criminal cases, and without exercising any other functions than those of judges and ministers of justice.

The laws are to determine the nature of the tribunals and judgments which are to exist, the organisation of each, its faculties, the mode of proceeding, and the qualifications of the officers be longing to them.

Judgment in criminal cases to be public, in the form prescribed by the laws.

No magistrate or judge can be deposed for a longer or shorter period, except by a written sentence, or suspended from the discharge of the duties of his office, except by a judicial act, or in consequence of the order of the king, after he, on sufficient grounds, commands him to be tried by a proper tribunal.

Judges are personally responsible for all infrac tions of the law committed by them.

Justice is to be administered in the name of the king.

In each province there is a provincial deputation, composed of a number of persons specified by law, and appointed by the same electors who return the deputies to the Cortes.

For the internal government of towns a corpo ration exists in each, and is elected by the inhabitants to whom this right appertains by law.

The law determines the organisation of duties of the provincial deputations and corporations. Each year the Government submits an estimate of the expenses of the state for the following year, and a schedule of the contributions, and means of raising them; and in like manner the accounts of the collection and disbursement of the public revenues for the examination and approval of the Cortes.

No tax or contribution is imposed or collected which has not been authorised by the law of the estimates or other special authority.

A similar authorisation is necessary to dispose | bled every two years or oftener, round the tree of of the property of the state, and for raising money Guernica, near the village of the same name. by loans on the public credit. The public debt is under the special protection of the nation.

The Consijo Real (Royal Supreme Court) sits | Valladolid, Barcelona and Santiago are said to be at Pampeluna; its judges are appointed by the so corrupt that their decisions are in most cases king. The natives are not subject to appear before referred to the supreme court at Madrid. All the any tribunal out of Navarra. courts are quite independent of government, which should, as in England, be considered a great advantage to the people. The number of capital crimes, as stated by Dr. Faure and other autho rities, appears incredible.

Navarra does not pay the burdensome provincial taxes of Spain, but is subject to customs, stamps, royal monopolies of gunpowder, salt, tobacco, &c., and also an annual amount or fine in lieu of the provincial taxes. The laws of Navarra are nearly similar to those of Aragon.

The Supreme or Royal Courts of Spain are: 1. The Royal Chancery of Valladolid. 2. The Royal Chancery of Grenada. 3. The Royal Council of Castile. 4. Navarra. 5. The Royal Audiences of Gallicia, sitting at Santiago. 6. Austurias or Oviedo. 7. Estramadura, at Caceres. 8. Aragon, at Sarragossa. 9. Valencia, at Valencia. 10. Catalonia, at Barcelona. 11. Majorca, at Palma. And 12. The Canaries, at Las Pamas. There are, under these judicial divisions, 165 corregidorias, of which 126 appertain to Castile and 39 to Aragon. The alcaldes are subordinates to the corregidors. The alcaldes ordinarios are the mayors of small towns and villages. The alguizil is a constable-bailiff, or huissier. The alguizil-mayor is, again, a high officer, nearly corresponding with high sheriff in England, and at the royal audiences often a nobleman.

The laws and codes of Spain consist chiefly of

1st. The Fuero Juzgo, chiefly an abridgment of the Theodosian Code originally promulgated by Alaric, who succeeded Euric, one of the Gothic conquerors of Spain, to which has, from time to time, been added numerous other laws.

2nd. The Ley de Las Siete Partidas is mostly formed of Roman, Gothic, and Canon laws.

3rd. Ordenamienta Real is the law or code of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile.

It is complained that there is a dangerous preponderance of lawyers in the Cortes, as their practice in pleading gives them, as in France and England, advantages over those not habituated to public speaking.

The constitution and laws of Spain appear to be liberal, and not unwise, in writing; but in prac tice they are rendered inefficient and unjust by the corruption, incapacity, and bigotry and pride of the nobility and clergy.

Several treaties of peace, commerce and navigation have been ratified between England and Spain. They are still de jure in force, but de facto are almost completely unobserved by the Spanish authorities.

of

Spain for a long period was filled by contraband merchandise by way of the Basque provinces, by smuggling through Portugal and over the Pyrenees, by way of the Mediterranean, and afterwards, up to the present day, with great activity by way Gibraltar. Secresy is the very nature of the contraband trade. While the smuggling system continues, the Government must either be winking at it or be blinded to its consequences, as it is car ried on by a complete system of telegraphing: lines of communication are kept up by which every shop, every warehouse, every public office, every functionary is a link; even the women are great smugglers. Smuggling is so completely organised, that there are estimated to be 100,000 armed men engaged in it; and in all it is estimated that more than 300,000 grown-up persons have scarcely any other occupation but the contraband trade. The cotton-manufacturers themselves, and several members of the Cortes, are represented as being the most actively engaged in this demoralising traffic. M. Marliani, one of the most highin-minded and patriotic senators of Spain, in his valuable work on the prohibitive system, ably exposes its ruinous consequences in his statement relative to the cotton-manufactures of Barcelona.* A report on those cotton-manufactures was officially drawn up two or three years ago, by Don Estevan de Sairo, but it is considered as fabricated to favour the prohibition of foreign fabrics.

4th. The Fuero Real, or the Code of Aragon, is a compound of Roman and Gothic laws compiled in 1248.

5th. The Novissima Recopilacion, or modern code, which enjoys almost supreme authority, consists of the occasional royal edicts.

The whole collection of laws forms a vast congruous body, admitting of every possible cause of delay in the administration of justice.

The Roman law is not allowed to be authority in Spain; and the old laws of Castile, except to the Justinian Pandects, as incompatible with liberty.

Nearly all the authorities agree in stating that the administration of justice is tedious and corrupt. The mere forms of the courts resemble those of the English Exchequer and Chancery; but the laws are so contradictory and voluminous as to allow the fullest scope to the chicanery of the escribano, who acts the part of solicitor, notary, register and attorney, and forms the only medium between the client and advocate and judge. In civil cases, plaintiffs and defendants are usually ruined by delay. In political cases the prosecutions, again, are summary.

The judges, the bar and escribanos are all, however, averse to reform; the courts of Grenada,

M. Marliani, an able and sound political economist, calculates the value and quantity of British cotton goods introduced into Spain. The tables of exports published by the British Government give no idea of the contraband trade in English cottons in the Peninsula. Spain, although not appearing in the Government returns of exports as a great consumer of English cottons, is, notwithstanding, much more than she seems, inasmuch as a large portion of the cotton goods sent annually to Gibral

Commercio, y Rentas Publicas: por Don Manuel Marliani, *De la Influencia del Sistema Prohil itiva en la Agricultura, Senador por las Islas Baliares. Madrid, 1842.