Delmar.] 0\)Z [jan. 15^ 



tion. A great portion of the entire country, cultivated and uncultivated, 

 was owned by the Church and nobility. The Inquisition had been but re- 

 cently suppressed; the peasantry were still in a cendition of serfdom, the 

 corvee was in vogue, the country swarmed with drones, bandits, smugglers, 

 vagabonds and beggars; religious liberty was denied, and popular education 

 was almost wholly unknown. There was no scientific development ; no 

 well-established middle class, and but the beginnings of a newspaper 

 I>ress and a railway and telegraph system. There were few or no roads, 

 or manufactories, while commerce was i-estricted, and free discussion 

 prohibited. In a word, Spain, though she had made more than one abortive 

 attempt to do so, had not yet fully awakened from the torpid condition 

 into which she had been cast ages before by the cold hands of ambitious, 

 unpatriotic and selfish ecclesiastics. The rest of the world had long since 

 awakened to a life of freedom and joined in the race of modern develop- 

 ment ; Spain was still asleep, drugged with the fumes of prescribed 

 ignorance and dictated intolerance. 



It is not held that this was truly the condition of Spain so late as up to 

 1855-61; but that this is substantially the picture of it that is to be found 

 in many of the most authoritative and latest works of reference now 

 extant in our language on the subject. 



The following view of Spain was written during the reign of Ferdi- 

 nand VII — about forty or fifty years ago (Macgregor, 994) : 



" Exclusive of about a fourth of the population, composed of persons 

 living on their property without doing anything, Spain, according to the 

 census of 1797, contained 100,000 individuals existing as smugglers, rob- 

 bers, pirates and assassins, escaped from prisons or garrisons ; about 

 40,000 officers appointed to capture these, and having an understanding 

 with them ; nearly 300,000 servants, of whom more than 100,000 were 

 unemployed, and left to their shifts ; 60,000 students, most of whom 

 begged or rather extorted charity at night, on the pretence of buying 

 books, and if to this melancholy list we add 100,000 beggars, fed by 60,- 

 000 monks at the doors of their convents, we shall find that at the period 

 referred to, there existed in Spain nearly 600,000 who were of no use 

 whatever in agricultural or the mechanical arts, and who were only calcu- 

 lated to prove dangerous to society. Lastly, having made these and other 

 necessary deductions, we find that there remained 964,571 day laborers, 

 917,197 peasants, 310,739 artizans and manufacturers, and 34,399 mer- 

 chants, to sustain by their productive exertions 11,000,000 of inhabitants. 

 These results which, mutatis mutnnclis, are applicable at the present day 

 as at the time when they were deducted, exhibit a state of society so 

 radically corrupt and debased as to render all hopes of its regeneration 

 very nearly desperate." 



Said M'Culloch, writing in 1844 : " Owing to vicious institutions, bad 

 government and other causes, Spain has, for a lengthened period, con- 

 tinued stationary or made little progress, while other nations have 

 advanced with giant steps in the career of improvement." 



