to take an interest in their concerns, and will regard with indifference the success or failure of their enemies that as far as Spain is concerned, England will look with indifference upon the struggles of Carlists and Christinos. Nay, the despotism which, by its very darkness, brings into brighter contrast the fair, unsullied face of English liberty will be preferred by this country to that dishonesty which, under the disguise of the counterfeit, exposes the genuine liberty to reproach.

Though these words be harsh, they are not unkind; they are uttered not in anger but in sorrow; they are wrung from a too sanguine believer in the advent of Spanish regeneration. Must we then despair of this desired consummation? Has the leaven of corruption so leavened the whole mass? Is Spain to be for ever marked with the darkest black upon the Map of Europe? Is the boast of her greatness to be reversed, and the sun set for ever upon her dominions? We will not despair of her resurrection-we will hope, we will pray for better and happier days. In the deepest gloom of our anticipations, that Declaration of Rights is visible-all is not lost in a country where so noble a charter has been proclaimed. We see in it a justification of our hopes. Come what may, that Magna Charta will remain a monument that, at the end of Ferdinand's reign, the knowledge and the love of freedom were not utterly extinguished among Spaniards that there were some at least who were worthy of enjoying it. Lamentable as the state of Spain may be at this moment, there appears no reason for doubting that it has even already made such advances in amelioration as render a continued progression inevitable. It is not merely that despotic has been converted into representative monarchy, which every Englishman must consider the one thing paramount in government; but measures have been introduced which, cutting away the very foundations whereon the old abuses rested, have created a necessity for completing the repairs of the reparable parts of the edifice.

The abolition of the mesta, and the introduction of a system of universal education, are two of the new measures which strike at the very root of the most palpable evils. The latter requires no comment; but the former, the mesta, is fortunately unknown in this country. It has been computed that there are about thirteen millions of sheep in Spain, and they may be divided into two classes, the migratory and the stationary flocks. Of the former about six millions may be estimated as the number enjoying the privileges of the mesta. These privileges are the right of passing through all lands arable or pasture, and of pasturing the flocks upon the grounds in passing; in some instances of fixing, at their own discretion, the amount to be paid to the landholders, and in the remainder, of receiving the pasturage gratis. The owners of lands in the districts in which these rights are established are compelled not only to forbear from inclosing their property, in order that the merinos may have free entrance and exit, but to keep a certain quantity of land in pasture, in order that the merinos may profit by their visit. If it be supposed that the practical working of this theoretical abuse be anything similar to our "right of common," and that it affords a maintenance to the one ewe lamb of many a poor peasant, who could no otherwise pay for its subsistence, such a supposition is at variance with the whole history of Spanish abuses. The migratory flocks are the property, not of the poor man, but the rich; not of the peasant, but of the wealthy noble, and of the still more wealthy convent; and the land upon which these merinos prey is the land of the poor man as well as of the rich. The owner of the one ewe lamb is called upon to maintain the property of him who has flocks and herds in abundance; thanks, however, to the establishment of constitutional government at Madrid, this obstacle to improvementthis curse of agriculture this mesta, has received its death-blow, and its extinction is the signal for the abolition of thousands of abuses.

The road of improvement is upon an inclined plane; once set in motion at the upper end, you require no extraneous influence to carry you to the other end of your journey, it is easy enough to proceed, it is difficult only to return. Spain has placed herself upon the plane, and cannot recede if she would. The hopes of her friends have been checked by her exhibitions of financial harlequinading, but they have taken root too deeply to be destroyed.

The war in the Basque provinces will never seat Don Carlos upon the throne; the struggle there is not for principles, but for privileges, not for the crown, but for the Fueros. Of all the provinces of Spain, the Basque are the most indifferent to a question of disputed succession; they care not whether Carlos or Isabella govern at Madrid; they desire to maintain the prescriptive abuses which have exempted them from contributing to the exigencies of the national government, and to receive the benefits of protection without bearing a share in its expenses. That such are the motives of these northern Carlists is too well known to be denied, and appears to be generally admitted; but the corollary of that admission is not fairly deduced. The Carlists may maintain themselves in Biscay and Navarre, and Spain remain indifferent and supine; but let the insurgents advance, and their war-cry "Carlos and our Fueros," be raised in the interior, and the scene would be suddenly changed, not as the English Carlists would suppose, by a march from the Ebro to Madrid, but by a general rising of Spain. The cause of these Fueros, which now enables Don Carlos to maintain himself in the north, would be fatal to his pretensions in the south, and in the east, and in the west, and in the centre. The champion of the local interests of Biscay is the enemy of the general interests of Spain; Don Carlos is in a false position; to advance is as fatal as to recede. We should like to see the experiment tried of blockading the insurgent provinces, instead of attempting to subdue them in arms.

The "sanguinary atrocities of the monster Rodil" have been the theme of many an invective. We are no advocates of a barbarous system of warfare; we believe it is as impolitic as odious; but when it is attempted to brand the Christinos with this reproach, it must not be forgotten that it is deserved equally by the Carlists; and he whose hatred of cruelty would deduce an unfitness for freedom, or a state of hopeless barbarism, from the excesses of civil warfare, will do well to remember the Scotch and Irish rebellions, with their catalogue of "sanguinary atrocities," and to parallel the severities of Rodil with those of the great Duke of Cumberland.

We confess that we shudder over the perusal of the accounts which detail the proceedings of both parties; but, in the natural exasperations of civil warfare, which in all countries and at all periods convert the milk of human kindness into gall, we can find some excuse for the excesses which Christino and Carlist commit. There are, however, writers in this country who swallow a Carlist camel, and strain at a Christino gnat; and the lady-like delicacy of a paper, which is shocked at the manly language of its contemporaries, denounces Rodil in one column, and makes a jest of Don Pedro's post-mortem exaamination in another; reads lectures upon the neglect of Donna Francisca to-day, and ridicules the decent grief of Donna Maria and the Duchess of Braganza to-morrow.

Enough of a revolting subject, let us return to our consideration o f the position and prospects of Spain, more particularly as they are connected with, or have relation to ourselves. England, if we may use the expression, sits at the helm of the world, and by her moral, rather than by her physical power, influences, more than any other country, the destinies of her neighbours; and of all the nations of the world, Spain is, at the present moment, the most dependent for good or evil upon England. If our capitalists and our Government were to unite, they might impose what terms they pleased upon Spain. They might compel her to be honest, as the price of her friendship, and stipulate for the opening of her ports as the condition of admission to our money-market. Our relations with Spain have been freed from their embarrassing complications by the fortunate issue of events in Portugal. It is not to be expected that a country should at once pass from civil war to absolute tranquillity and prosperity; nor is it pretended that Portugal has been exempted from that general decree of Providence which has limited to gradual steps the progression, whether moral or physical, of man. She has no royal road to perfection, but it may safely be asserted, that the most sanguine anticipations of her friends have been exceeded by the progress she has made; and that the chances of her retrogression are little, let the funds, that national barometer, be witness.

Having then nothing to fear for Portugal, we are by so much disembarrassed in our dealings with Spain, and we may give their full weight to the considerations which are suggested by an examination into the immediate and ultimate policy which complicates the question between France and Spain. There can be no doubt that the immediate policy of Louis Philippe was to strengthen his throne against the Carlists in France, and with that view to prevent their successes in either portion of the Spanish peninsula. And as danger was imminent from Spain, it was his immediate policy to acknowledge the alteration in the line of Spanish succession, even though it were effected by a repeal of the law which excluded females from the inheritance. But it should never be forgotten that this immediate policy is no more than a temporary deviation from that which it must ultimately return to, and that the real policy of France is to exclude females from the succession to the throne of Spain. The fear of an Austrian prince being raised to the throne marital of that country can never be entirely extinguished in the breasts of the statesmen of Paris. It may for a time give way to the more urgent fears of more immediate dangers, but it will return to its effective operation so soon as such immediate dangers shall have passed away. Every hour that is added to the duration of the Orleans dynasty will, if it be not pregnant with unexpected and disastrous contingencies, be tending to the consolidation and permanent stability of the throne of " the revolution of July," and will, in an equal degree, be diminishing the necessity of combating and exterminating Carlism, and diminishing the existing necessity for upholding the cause of Isabella.

The throne of Louis Philippe appears to be placed between the Scylla of Carlism and the Charybdis of a republic: the danger from the former is the greater, because, with a strong party at home, it has a still stronger party abroad; and republicanism, though equal to Carlism in France, is considerably weaker in the other countries of Europe; England, the great enemy of Carlism, being still more inimical to its antagonist. The moment, however, in which republicanism should become the most imminent of the dangers which threaten " the new order of things" in France, that moment would Louis Philippe make common cause with the principle of Carlism, and endeavour to convert it into the nourishment and sustenance of his power; from that moment adieu to the friendship which regenerated France is professing for regenerating Spain.

There is then no safety for the Constitutionalists if they build up their hopes upon a foundation so uncertain and shifting as that of the friendship of France; three days may destroy it-the death of one individual may be its death-blow. But upon England, Spain-not republican, but constitutionally monarchical Spain-may for ever, and under all possible changes, depend for friendship and protection. Let us tell her that we will be her fast friends and protectors, if she will be honest and free. Our interests, rightly understood, are not incompatible with hers; they are really connected, and, in some degree, dependent upon each other. No state of affairs in this country, no changes of government or of public opinion, could be reasonably anticipated, which should make it the interest of this country that Spain should be under any form of government but that of constitutional monarchy. No rational Englishman will refuse his assent to the postulate, that constitutional monarchy is of all forms of government the most fit for civilized communities of men, and that it affords the best chances of securing the two great requisites of government, prosperity at home and peace abroad. We have an interest in the peace of Spain, as removing a chance of the disturbance of our own, and we have an interest in her prosperity, as acting immediately upon our commerce. The pettiest chapman is aware that he thrives by the thriving of his neighbours.

Much has been lately declaimed upon the subject of natural enemies and friends; and, without assenting to so monstrous an absurdity as the proposition that rational man, whether as an individual or in communities, has any natural enemies amongst rational men, if, the converse of the proposition being admitted, we have any friends whose friendship is more natural to us than that of others, then unquestionably Spain is beyond all other countries our natural friend.

Whether it be our policy to aid and support, or to restrain and depress France, and upon these two points of policy the whole question of our foreign relations may be turned, Spain is our natural coadjutor; and it may be safely asserted, that there is no country in the world which presents so many tempting advantages to commerce as she can present to the commerce of Great Britain.

France, the country with which we are most desirous of allying our commerce upon liberal principles, is the most pertinacious of all countries in refusing to accept our invitations. And it is not merely that she declines to make in our favour an exception from the general rules of her policy, but she is actually so blinded by an ignorant jealousy of our commercial prosperity, that she passes by the advantages which she might gain from

this country, and deals out to us a harsher measure than she deals to less prosperous and more unfriendly nations.

We are aware that the suggestions of national vanity may induce us to overrate the advantages which France is obtaining from her intimate alliance with England; but to us it appears that they are almost entirely upon one side, and that we give her infinitely more than we receive in

return.

We do not wish to depreciate the general and necessarily intrinsic value of national friendships, and we are very ready to admit that it is considerable, where the nation with which we are connected is so advanced in civilization as France; but we must be permitted to believe that the value is certainly not less to the country which enjoys the friendship of England; and the accidental and adventitious advantages appear to be nearly altogether in favour of our ally. The Anglo-French alliance has undoubtedly maintained the peace of Europe, which without that alliance would as undoubtedly have been broken; but it must be remembered that, in so doing, it has preserved this country from no more than the ulterior chances of a war, whereas it has preserved France from the certainty. An European war would have begun with our neighbour; it might have been extended to ourselves. What has France given us in return? What has she given us in return for our commercial gifts-our benefits of free trade? She continues her system of restriction and exclusion, and encourages any flag rather than our own. Are we then to fight with France for the high prize of her commercial reciprocity? Are we to endanger the peace of Europe for the same cause? or are we to return to our old system of prohibitions, and injure ourselves that we may wreak our spite upon her? Most assuredly not, is the answer to each inquiry. But, as the recent exposé of Mons. Thiers has pretty plainly demonstrated the visionary nature of all such anticipations as have been formed of the French nation being prepared before long to admit us to the mutual advantages of reciprocal liberality, it may be as well to see whether it be possible to obtain through any hitherto untried channel those concessions which we have failed to obtain by repeated attempts in the usual well-beaten tracks.

We are ready enough to consider the Peninsula as the point from which we are to act upon the political power of France, but it seems strangely enough to escape our observation that the commerce of that country may be acted upon from the same spot. We ask reciprocity from France; she declines or avoids to give it; and we have no means of obtaining it upon compulsion except such as (to use the well-known expression of Franklin) would make us pay too dear for our whistle: but we have in the present state of Spain the power of compelling her to grant us what France refuses; and, as reciprocity of commerce would be no less advantageous to Spain than to Great Britain, why should we hesitate to force it upon her? Let our Government and our capitalists unite, and we may stipulate for the opening of the ports of Spain, in return for her admission to our money-market. There is scarcely an article of produce and manufactures which we import from France which we might not in a very short time procure from Spain; and if we lowered the duties upon the produce of the Peninsula, we should at the same time lower the tone of the Chamber of Commerce at Paris.

We have reason to know that there would be but little difficulty in