396 Memoir of William Maclure. 



to visit the latter country on account of the liberal constitu- 

 tion promulgated by the Cortes, which promised a compara- 

 tively free government to a country long oppressed by every 

 species of bondage. His plan was to establish a great agri- 

 cultural school, in which physical labour should be combined 

 with moral and intellectual culture. His views were almost 

 exclusively directed to the lower and consequently uneduca- 

 ted classes, whom he hoped to elevate above the thraldom to 

 which they had been subjected by the institutions of their 

 country. He purchased of the government 10,000 acres of 

 land near the city of Alicant ; and having repaired the build- 

 ings, and placed the estate in complete order, he prepared 

 to commence his scheme of practical benevolence. Scarce- 

 ly, however, were these arrangements made when the Cons- 

 titutional government was overthrown, and the old institu- 

 tions, with all their abuses, were again imposed upon this 

 unfortunate country. The property which Mr. Maclure had 

 purchased from the Cortes had been confiscated from the 

 Church ; and as the priesthood were now reinvested in their 

 estates, they at once dispossessed him without ceremony or 

 reimbursement. 



Disappointed and mortified by this adverse termination 

 of his plans, Mr. Maclure abandoned them as hopeless, and 

 prepared to return to the United States. Before doing so, 

 however, he visited various parts of southern Spain with a 

 view to scientific investigation. But even in this unoffend- 

 ing employment he found himself surrounded by new dan- 

 gers, which compelled him to relinquish much that he had 

 proposed to accomplish in these researches ; and his feel- 

 ings, and the causes which gave rise to them, are forcibly 

 expressed in a letter to his friend Professor Silliman, dated 

 Alicant, March 6, 1824. 



" I have been much disappointed in being prevented 

 from executing my Mineralogical excursions in Spain, by 

 the bands of powerful robbers that have long infested the 



