1875.] diO [Delmar, 



employed, but not generally, in Guipuzcoa, Basque Provinces, population 

 162,547. In Biscay, Basque Provinces, population 200,000, all the females 

 work in the fields at times, and female labor is largely employed. In the 

 Provinces of Malaga, Grranada, Almeria, and Jaen, population 1,565,979, 

 female labor is hardly at all employed in the cultivation of land, only in 

 gathering olives and cutting grapes. From these and other reports (Land 

 Tenures, Part III), I have ventured to estimate the number of female 

 laborers in Spain at about 340,000, though I dare say the true number is 

 upwards of 500,000. 



Land Tenures. 



The laws of 1820 abolished the right of primogeniture and all other 

 species of civic entail (mayorazgos) ; then followed that of 1841 on ecclesias- 

 tical benefices, and finally that of 1855, which declared in a state of sale land 

 and house property belonging to the State or appertaining to corporations 

 of towns, beneficence, public instruction, clergy, religious fraternities, 

 pious works, sanctuaries, etc. Like many other reforms which have 

 taken place from time to time in Spain, certain provisions of this one 

 were rescinded, and it was not until 1865 that the Crown lands were finally 

 decreed in a state of sale. It is, however, from the year 1855 that the 

 freedom of Spain from religious and feudal tenures really dates. 



When it is considered that these tenures were abolished in France by 

 the Revolution of 1789, in the United States, generally, during the ear- 

 liest days of their history as independent Commonwealths, and in Prus- 

 sia in 1820, it cannot be deemed strange that a country which did not 

 succeed in throwing them off until 1855 should have failed to show any 

 signs of progress until within very recent years. 



The condition of affairs in 1840 is thus described : 



"Mr. Townsend (ii, 238) mentions that the estates of three great lords 

 — the Dukes of Osuua, Alba, and Medina Cceli — cover nearly the whole 

 of the immense Province of Andalusia ; and several in the other prov- 

 inces are hardly less extensive." M'Culloch, p. 837, 



"The great estates belonging to the corporations, or towns, are held in 

 common ; and in consequence are wholly, or almost wholly, in pasture." 

 — Ibid. 



In 1850, we have the following account : 



"Among the causes of the defective state of agriculture in Spain are 

 the tenures of land. The unalienable, indivisible mayorazgos (entails) are 

 considered as having for a long period comprised, including the property 

 of the Church, about three-fourths of the territorial surface of Spain. 



"The Mesta is another great, although secondary, cause of the neglect 

 of agriculture. This is the name of a great incorporated company of 

 nobles, ecclesiastical chapters, persons in power and members of monas- 

 teries, who were authorized to feed their flocks, at scarcely any expense, on 

 all the pastures of the kingdom, and have almost an imperative special code 

 of laws {Leyes y Ordenenzas de la Mesta) for maintaining their originally 

 usurped privileoes. It holds its courts and has numerous Alcaldes, 



