SPANISH LOAN*. 175 



the mode of assessment. The quantity of salt which every man, 

 even the poorest, must take and pay for, whether he consume it or 

 not, is apportioned to him without appeal ; the price, we need not 

 add, is fixed and exacted likewise on the spot. Besides these crying- 

 abuses, the very men, Canga Arguelles among the number, pro- 

 fessing to be enlightened economists, and moving in the spirit of the 

 age, were those who in power most rigidly adhered to and enforced 

 that fiscal system, that absurd code of custom-house law, by which 

 Spain is fenced in with a wall of prohibitions and prohibitory duties ; 

 the effect of which has been, and still is, to convert the whole of 

 her seaboard from St. Sebastian of the Atlantic to the gulf of Rosas 

 in the Mediterranean ; of her land frontier from Tuy to Ayamonte, 

 on the side of Portugal, from the eastern to western Pyrennees, or 

 that of France into vast lines of an immense system of contraband 

 traffic, unparalleled in the whole world ; in which native and foreign 

 shipping are equally engaged in almost open violation of custom- 

 house law, and in defiance of Guardas Costas ; whilst tribes of 

 smugglers traverse the interior, convoying magazines of prohibited 

 merchandise in the face of day, and in undisguised contempt of 

 custom-house officers and regular troops, wherever no previous 

 good understanding has been provided for. The system admirably 

 described in the Noticias Secretas de America of Ulloa, as prevailing 1 

 in her ultramarine possessions, may, with trifling- reservations, be 

 regarded as relatively true of Spain herself; and therein the chain 

 of corruption by means of which it flourishes may be traced, link 

 by link, from the Intendentes and Oidores of the Real Audiencia 

 down to the Official Real and Guarda mayor. 



Such being the practical proficiency of liberal as well as absolute 

 Spain in the science of political economy, let us glance at her finan- 

 cial position on the second constitutional advent. The revolution of 

 the Isle de Leon, in the year 1820, achieved through the instru- 

 mentality of an army mutinous for want of pay, and infected with a 

 pusillanimous dread of confronting the terrors of Bolivar and the 

 wastes of the Magdalena, installed the Cortes into an empty trea- 

 sure and a bankrupt government. According to the report of a 

 committee of finance, presented to that body on the 17th of May, 

 1822, the then verified debt is thus classed: 



FOREIGN DEBT IN 1820. 



3 1 ,1 35 bonds of the loans in Holland, Reales v eiion. 



at 5,600 reales each . . . 174,356,000 

 19,918,093 florins of interest on the 

 , above in arrears .... 89,631,418 



Total, foreign debt of Spain . . 263,987,418 



DOMESTIC DEBT. 



Debt bearing interest . . .7,081,016,605 

 Ditto, without interest . . .7,587,286,139 



Total, domestic debt .... 14,668,302,745 



Total debt 14,932,290,163 



