SPAIN. 



All the lines are the property of private com- 

 panies, but subsidized by the state. The total 

 amount of Government subventions to railways 

 down to Dec. 31, 1880, was 650,000,000 pese- 

 tas. The aggregate receipts of the railways 

 of Spain reached 139,218,525 pesetas, for 1880, 

 against 61,3f3,275 pesetas working expenses. 



Telegraphs. The state telegraph lines in 1881 

 were of a total length of 10,417 miles. Of the 

 aggregate of 3,978,804 dispatches, one fourth 

 were international, and one fifth of the re- 

 mainder, official. 



Post-Office. The number of letters and postal- 

 cards that passed through the post-office in 1881 

 was 94,962,000; that of newspapers, 40,000,- 

 000 ; and that of packets of samples, 6,000,000. 



Philippine Islands. The chief export staples 

 of this archipelago are sugar, hemp, tobacco, 

 cigars, coffee, and dye-woods; the first repre- 

 senting alone about 60 per cent, of the total 

 value of the export trade, which in 1881 

 amounted to $20,777,000, against $25,493,319 

 in 1880. The sugar shipped in 1881 was of the 

 value of $12,403,993 ; and the hemp, raw and 

 manufactured, $9,026,404. 



The exports to Great Britain in 1882 were 

 reported at the value of $11,535,585, of which 

 $7,128,440 stood for unrefined sugar, and $4,- 

 150,165 for hemp. The imports from Great 

 Britain in the same year were of the value of 

 $8,963,975, about two thirds of which were 

 for cotton fabrics. 



Historical Sketch. By the beginning of 1883 

 Socialism had extended its contagion to the 

 Peninsula, and made its presence so sensibly 

 felt as to divert public attention from the 

 wearisome debates of the legislative halls. An- 

 archy had developed in the industrial centers 

 and throughout Andalusia, but particularly in 

 the provinces of Cadiz and Seville, where the 

 tenebrioua society of the Mario negra (Black 

 Hand) was organized with tendencies little less 

 alarming than those of the Nihilists of other 

 parts of Europe. As many as one thousand 

 members of the organization were detected 

 and imprisoned in February; and documents 

 found in their possession showed the adherents 

 of the Mano negra to number eight or nine 

 thousand scattered throughout the kingdom. 

 Ramifications were discovered in Portugal also, 

 and a band of seven Nihilists was seized in 

 Oporto in March, one of these being the editor 

 of a socialistic journal, u O Operario." Despite 

 this singularly vitiated state of society, party 

 wars and parliamentary dissensions continued 

 with unabated intensity ; and the Sagasta min- 

 istry had to struggle hard to maintain its entity 

 between its allies of the left and its more mod- 

 erate allies, and escape entanglement in the 

 conflicts incessantly rising around it. Spain 

 was not, indeed, free from political crises 

 which might well become serious one day or 

 other ; but in May these and other concerns of 

 a purely national character were for a moment 

 forgotten, and Castilian courtesy was displayed 

 in a succession of splendid fetes in honor of 



their Majesties of Portugal, whose visit to their 

 cousins of Spain, rather than a mere return for 

 that of King Alfonso and Queen Christina to 

 Lisbon the year previous, was intended as a seal 

 of friendship between the two families and a re- 

 newal of cordial intimacy between the two coun- 

 tries. Not that the Utopian idea of an Iberic 

 union had been revived ; indeed, in exchanging 

 toasts Dom Luiz and Don Alfonso hinted clear- 

 ly that no alliance, however close, between the 

 two nations should interfere with the ''inde- 

 pendence or autonomy of either." Such, in- 

 deed, is the only possible basis of an enduring 

 union between Spain and Portugal, serving the 

 latter as a shield against any oppressive influ- 

 ences that might threaten her, and bringing to 

 the former an additional sense of security in 

 the friendship of her neighbor. 



Before the apprehensions aroused by the 

 Socialistic movement already alluded to had 

 been completely lulled, the country was thrown 

 suddenly into consternation by the announce- 

 ment that on the night of August 4th, some 

 officers of the reserve, at the head of a handful 

 of troops, had seized the citadel of Badajos, and 

 that a revolutionary junta had proclaimed the 

 republic. No military insurrection had taken 

 place since the accession of the present sov- 

 ereign, and the incident, although alarming, 

 might have been regarded as purely local and 

 temporary, had it not been immediately fol- 

 lowed by an outburst in a regiment encamped 

 near Logrono, on the banks of the Ebro, and 

 tidings of disturbance in Barcelona. By prompt 

 action on the part of the Minister of War, the 

 manifestations of sedition were effectually re- 

 pressed both in the north and the southwest; 

 but in most minds a feeling of doubt remained 

 as to whether they were not the symptoms 

 prematurely developed of a general anti- 

 monarchical agitation. Meantime the danger 

 seemed to have entirely passed away; and 

 Don Alfonso, in a tour through some of the 

 provinces, received from the people as well as 

 from the army unequivocal proofs of unshaken 

 popularity. An immediate result of the trouble, 

 however, was a painful conflict of opinion be- 

 tween the President of the Council and the lib- 

 eral members of the Cabinet, on the one hand, 

 and the Minister of War and his friends on the 

 other, as to the expediency of a vigorous policy 

 of precaution or one of conciliation. Seflor 

 Sagasta's views prevailed; the state of siege 

 was discontinued in the centers of the recent 

 tumults, and the constitutional guarantees, for 

 a time suspended, were restored. The breach 

 already existing between the liberal portion of 

 the Cabinet, represented by the Premier, and 

 the more conservative faction, represented by 

 Gen. Martinez Campos, was now widened be- 

 yond remedy, and the inevitable crisis was only 

 deferred until after the King's return from 

 Germany. Recreation was the ostensible ob- 

 ject of Don Alfonso's visit to the northern 

 courts, at a time when the kingdom was in 

 such an unsettled condition; but the inter- 



