wants, instead of preparing a stock of produce for export. Corn, from the badness of the roads and the want of canals, may be dear in one district and cheap in another. The purchase made for the granaries is seldom to an extent sufficient to meet the wants of a bad season. Catalonia, since increasing its manufactures and its population, has been supplied with provisions, not from the back provinces so much as from other countries. Of the domestic animals of Spain, the cattle are less numerous than the wants of the country nquire, or the extent of pasture in the higher grounds would afford the means of rearing. Mules are in general use for travelling; and as to horses, the famed breed of Andalusia is considered as degenerating. Manufactures and Trade.-In a country abounding with the finest wool, and not deficient in provisions, flourishing manufactures of that article might be expected; but such are the pernicious effects of multiplied holidays and an unenlightened government, that Spain is obliged to import part of her broad cloth, her flannel, and her serges, from England and France. In like manner, notwithstanding the productive iron mines of Biscay, she imports great part of her hardware; so that if we except Catalonia, where both silks and cottons are made in large quantities, the only manufactures conducted with spirit in Spain are the twisting of silk, the tanning of leather, and the working of Sparto or Esparto grass (Spanish broom) into matts, baskets, shoes, and other articles. Bad roads, monopolies on the part of government, the enforcement of restrictive laws that ought long since to have been abrogated, are among the principal causes of the backward state of the productive industry of Spain.

In the middle ages the trade of Spain with foreign countries was confined to a few towns of importance, as Venice, Genoa, Ghent, and Bruges. The discovery of America opened a prospect which would have been eagerly embraced by an active people: in the hands of the Spaniards, this trade was miserably cramped by the spirit of monopoly. Confined at first to Seville, transferred after 1720 to Cadiz, and relieved from part of its absurd restrictions in 1739 and 1764, it was at last thrown open, after 1778, to a number of the chief seaports of the kingdom. This measure was productive of the best effects, and the mercantile shipping of Spain received a very considerable increase; but the trade in question never acquired an importance to be compared to that of England with the United States. The Spanish Americans are indolent, have few wants, and but limited means of purchase. Part of their

imports have long been supplied by the English from Jamaica and Trinidad, and a farther part from the United States; and now that the shackles of monopoly are definitively broken, there seems little doubt of the chief supplies being received direct from England.

The foreign trade of Spain with England, France, and the Netherlands, comprises a variety of articles both of export and import: with other countries it is less varied. From the Baltic the imports are corn and naval stores; from Greece, the coast of Africa, and the Euxine, they are in general confined to corn. The exports from Spain consist chiefly of wool, wine, brandy, fruit, olive oil, silk, salt, and barilla. All these, but in particular wool, salt, fruit, and wine, form exports to England. In return, the chief imports of Spain are woollen cloth, hardware, and cottons from England; linen from Germany and Ireland; woollens, jewellery, and paper, from France; and salt fish from England and Newfoundland. The intercourse between Spain and Britain would have been much greater, had not the transfer of the crown of Spain to a branch of the Bourbons, produced a political jealousy and consequent connexion between Britain and Portugal. The total value of exports from Spain in 1792 was computed at L.7,000,000 sterling; and it probably has in no year exceeded L.8,000,000 or L.9,000,000, equal to about a third of those of France, or a sixth of those of Great Britain. The principal seaports are Cadiz, Barcelona, Carthagena, Malaga, Alicant, Corunna, Bilboa, and St Sebastian. The proportion of foreign trade carried on in Spanish bottoms, was altogether insignificant, until 1778, and since then it has not been large, the Catalans and Biscayans being almost their only naviga

tors.

Mercantile questions are in general decided by special courts like the tribunals of commerce in France. The Spaniards have long been described as actuated in their transactions, both political and commercial, by a high sense of honour; an encomium which probably resolves itself into little more than the characteristic simplicity of a people of few wants, and, in the larger towns, into the habit of straight forward dealing, common to the merchants of Cadiz, as to those of Amsterdam, London, or other cities where commerce is conducted on ascertained rules, and to the exclu sion of petty artifice. Whatever be the case in Old Spain, certain it is that the Spanish Americans have no title to such an eulogy: they have in their commercial dealings the ordinary faults of a people living without the restraint of law; and it is an establish

ed rule among British merchants to give them as little credit as possible.

The surprising exaggerations in regard to the wealth and population of Spain in former ages, are to be attributed partly to the Arabic, partly to the early Spanish writers. They remained uncontradicted in Spain, as in the rest of Europe, until the latter part of the 18th century; when Capmany and a few other writers began to open the eyes of the public. The arguments of these writers rest on a substantial foundation. The division of landed property under the Romans, and the general use of slave labour, were adverse to the growth of national prosperity; no improvement was to be expected from the Visigoths, and not much from the Moors, whose rank in the scale of civilisation has been greatly overrated. Successive wars in the interior, from the 8th to the 15th century, necessarily retarded the increase of both wealth and population, leaving the boasted Spain of the age of Charles V. and Philip II. far inferior to the Spain of the present day. Her influence on the foreign politics of that age was owing entirely to the weakness of other states, as was sufficiently proved by the limited force which she employed in her long war against the Netherlands, and even in that effort of three years of preparation, the armada against England, the largest ships in which were not equal to the third rates of Britain at present. As to the Spanish manufactures of that age, it appears that the higher classes wore the cloth of Ghent, Bruges, and Milan, and that the use of Spanish woollens was confined to the lower orders.

A great cause of the backwardness of the Spanish agriculture, as of their productive industry in general, is the loss of time in holidays. A minor cause is the distance of part of the cultivated lands from the dwellings of the peasantry, the latter living not in detached houses, but in villages; a practice common in France and many other parts of the continent. There is also a general complaint of want of hands in Spain; the church having absorbed in its monasteries, as well as in its less humble functions, many who might have been useful as cultivators or manufacturers. A further loss is sustained by the undue proportion of lawyers, students, and other genteel professions; while of the lower classes, an extra number become men servants, and the lowest of all are not ashamed to go a begging. It is supposed that the agriculturists, who in France form two-thirds of the population, do not in Spain exceed one-third. Add to this the farther discouragements of agriculture, the prohibitions on the export of corn, the injudicious taxes, the difficulty of procuring water during the droughts of sum

mer; farther, the want of inclosures, the extent of land entailed on hereditary possessors, vested in the church, or belonging to the Mesta, an institution peculiar to Spain, the object of which is to provide for the periodical removals of the sheep. These removals evidently originated in the mutual wants of the shepherds of the mountains and of the plains, the former being unable to procure shelter for their sheep during winter, the latter to find fresh pasture during summer. Hence the necessity of driving vast numbers of sheep from the plains of Estremadura, Andalusia, and. Leon, to the mountainous tracks of the Castiles and Biscay. These migrations begin about the end of April, or the early part of May: they take place in collective bodies of about 10,000 sheep, conducted by about 50 shepherds, under the charge of a mayoral or officer of responsibility. The progress of such numerous flocks is ne cessarily slow, a journey of 400 or 300 miles, requiring 30 or 35 days. It is usual to shear the sheep by the way, in the large buildings called Èsquileios, erected for that purpose. In autumn a similar journey is requisite, to bring the flocks from the high ground to the plains. Migrations of so frequent occurrence, and to so great an extent, necessarily required specific regulations, and gave rise to the Mesta, an association authorised by government to decide all questions between the shepherds and the farmers through whose lands the migrations take place. Such questions are decided by special courts, who perform a kind of cir cuit for the purpose. Of the propriety of law and regulation on such a head, there can be no doubt; but great exception is made to several of the existing enactments, such as, that no land that has been once in pasturage, shall be cultivated until offered to the Mesta at a certain rate; that a road of 240 feet in width shall be left in the cultivated fields, &c.

The number of the migratory sheep is necessarily various: of late years it has been computed at 5,000,000. The quality of the Spanish wool has long been celebrated; bat it is not clear that that of the migratory surpasses that of the stationary sheep.

Church.-The Catholic was, till so lately as 1820, the only religion openly tolerated in Spain. Formerly the power of the Pope extended to the appointment of all the prin cipal benefices which fell vacant during eight months of the year: the receipts from unoccupied livings, bulls, briefs, indulgences, all belonged to him, until a concordat, passed in 1753, transferred these ecclesiastical dues to the crown, and confiued the patronage of the holy see to about fifty of the first benefices in the kingdom.

The Inquisition was introduced soon after 1492, to watch over and eventually to clear the kingdom of the Jews and Moors. In the 16th and 17th centuries it found means to extend its power over the Christian ift sectaries; but in the 18th it became little else than an engine of police. It was aboellished by Bonaparte, but restored by Ferat dinand in 1814: in 1820 it was abolished, it is to be hoped, for ever. Its judges in former ages were chiefly Dominican monks; afterwards they consisted of regular clergy, with a certain proportion of laymen.

The property of the church was one of the earliest objects of attack on the part of the revolutionists in 1820, and with reason; for though the conduct of many of the clergy was exemplary, the division of income was so unequal, that while several prelates, such as the archbishop of Valencia, had an income of L.20,000 sterling, and the archbishop of Toledo three times as much, the lower clergy lived in a state of poverty. They were besides far too numerous; for while the prelates of Spain consisted of 8 archbishops and 61 bishops, the minor clergy were not short of 40,000, distributed throughout 18,871 parishes. In addition to these, 2000 monasteries contained nearly 50,000 monks; and 1075 convents, about 20,000 nuns. Part of these monasteries and convents are now (1821) abolished, and the inmates allowed a small pension for life, government having appropriated their lands to the public treasury. The direct taxes paid by the clergy were insignificant; but the dues raised on church property in the shape of first fruits (annates) and temporary vacancies, were inconsiderable. The clergy were amenable, not to civil courts, but to those of the bishops; and the appeals from the latter lay to a court at Madrid, in which the papal nuncio was president.

Education. The universities of Spain, formerly 24 in number, have been progressively reduced to 11, and of these, few are either well conducted or much frequented. The antiquated system of logic, and other parts of scholastic philosophy, continued to be taught until the middle of the 18th century, when the government, roused by ridicule at home, and the example of improvement abroad, at last prescribed alterations, which, however, still leave the Spanish universities greatly behind those of France, Germany, or Great Britain. In most of the monasteries are schools instituted for the education of the monks, but open to youth generally. The instruction given there is replete with superstitions and antiquated Of the various schools of the kingdom unconnected with monasteries, many are conducted on a plan less exceptionable, but still far from correspond

notions.

VOL. V. PART II.

ing to the general advancement of the age. Madrid has a public library of fully 100,000 volumes; and there are collections on a smaller scale in other cities; but as yet, at least, they are greatly deficient in good modern publications.

Spain, when subject to the Romans, produced several eminent men; and when under the Moors, claimed the credit of cultivating the elegant arts, at a time when the rest of Europe was immersed in barbarismı. But this claim rests in some measure on architectural monuments-a doubtful evidence of civilisation, and possessed in common with such backward nations as the Hindoos and Mexicans. In fact, Spain appears to have had very little literature until the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II. a period still cited as its golden age, but evidently overrated, its eminent writers having been few, and the succeeding centuries (the 16th and 17th) having been avowedly feeble, without any cause of decline. At last, in the middle of the 18th century, the government and a small but distinguished body of individuals, became conscious of the national inferiority, and began to labour for the diffusion of improvement. The good books in the Spanish language are not many, but they date in general from that period.

The Spanish language is founded on the Latin, with a mixture of Celtic, and, in the southern provinces, of Arabic. It is sonorous and harmonious, is pronounced almost literally as it is written, and is a fine language, when exhibited without that tendency to amplification, or rather to bombast, so common among Spanish writers. Of the fine arts, the Spaniards have been most successful in painting and architecture.

Administration of Justice.-The judges of petty offences in Spain are the alcades, officers corresponding to the justices of peace in Britain, or more properly combining the functions of the French mayor and judge of the peace. Next come the corregidores and alcades mayores, a class whose jurisdiction is somewhat more comprehensive, but still limited to a district, and subject to revisal by the audiencias, or great courts, whose jurisdiction is extensive, and whose decisions can be reversed only in Madrid. These audiencias are established in a number of the principal towns, such as Seville, Granada, Valencia, Barcelona, Saragossa, Valladolid, Oviedo, Corunna, Caceres in Estremadura, and Palma in the island of Majorca: to which are to be added, the couneil of Navarre, and the council of Castile at Madrid, the latter forming, like the court of cassation in France, the final judicature, or court of appeal for the kingdom. The

2 Y.