SCIENCE OF HISTORY. 541 



kind were better prepared to follow their impulse. To this 

 example from men, let us add another from governments. 

 The comparatively enlightened rule of which Spain had the 

 benefit during a considerable part of the eighteenth century, 

 did not correct the fundamental defects of the Spanish people ; 

 and in consequence, though it did great temporary good, so 

 much of that good perished with it, that it may plausibly be 

 affirmed to have had no permanent effect. The case has been 

 cited as a proof how little governments can do, in opposition 

 to the causes which have determined the general character of 

 the nation. It does show how much there is which they 

 cannot do ; but not that they can do nothing. Compare what 

 Spain was at the beginning of that half century of liberal 

 government, with what she had become at its close. That 

 period fairly let in the light of European thought upon the 

 more educated classes ; and it never afterwards ceased to go 

 on spreading. Previous to that time the change was in an 

 inverse direction ; culture, light, intellectual and even material 

 activity, were becoming extinguished. Was it nothing to 

 arrest this downward and convert it into an upward course ? 

 How much that Charles the Third and Aranda could not do, 

 has been the ultimate consequence of what they did ! To that 

 half century Spain owes that she has got rid of the Inquisi- 

 tion, that she has got rid of the monks, that she now has par- 

 liaments and (save in exceptional intervals) a free press, and 

 the feelings of freedom and citizenship, and is acquiring rail- 

 roads and all the other constituents of material and economical 

 progress. In the Spain which preceded that era there was not 

 a single element at work, which could have led to these results 

 in any length of time, if the country had continued to be go- 

 verned as it was by the last princes of the Austrian dynasty, 

 or if the Bourbon rulers had been from the first what, both 

 in Spain and in Naples, they afterwards became. 



And if a government can do much, even when it seems to 

 have done little, in causing positive improvement, still greater 

 are the issues dependent on it in the way of warding off evils, 

 both internal and external, which else would stop improvement 

 altogether. A good or a bad counsellor, in a single city at a 



