enabled to combine and wrest permanent
privileges from the crown, at a time when feudalism was strong. But the
Spanish communes waited for combined action until feudalism had become
weak, and modern despotism, with its standing armies and its control of
the spiritual power, was arrayed in the ranks against them. The War of
the Communes, early in the reign of Charles V., irrevocably decided the
case in favour of despotism, and from that date the internal decline of
Spain may be said to have begun.

But the triumphant consolidation of the spiritual and temporal powers of
despotism, and the abnormal development of loyalty and bigotry, were not
the only evil results of the chronic struggle in which Spain had been
engaged. For many centuries, while Christian Spain had been but a fringe
of debatable border-land on the skirts of the Moorish kingdom,
perpetual guerilla warfare had rendered consecutive labour difficult or
impracticable; and the physical configuration of the country contributed
in bringing about this result. To plunder the Moors across the border
was easier than to till the ground at home. Then as the Spaniards,
exemplifying the military superiority of the feudal over the sultanic
form of social organization, proceeded steadily to recover dominion over
the land, the industrious Moors, instead of migrating backward before
the advance of their conquerors, remained at home and submitted to them.
Thus Spanish society became compounded of two distinct castes,--the
Moorish Spaniards, who were skilled labourers, and the Gothic Spaniards,
by whom all labour, crude or skilful, was deemed the stigma of a
conquered race, and unworthy the attention of respectable people. As Mr.
Motley concisely says:--

"The highest industrial and scientific civilization that had been
exhibited upon Spanish territory was that of Moors and Jews. When in
the course of time those races had been subjugated, massacred, or driven
into exile, not only was Spain deprived of its highest intellectual
culture and its most productive labour, but intelligence, science, and
industry were accounted degrading, because the mark of inferior and
detested peoples."

This is the key to the whole subsequent history of Spain. Bigotry,
loyalty, and consecrated idleness are the three factors which have
made that great country what it is to-day,--the most backward region in
Europe. In view of the circumstances just narrated, it is not surprising
to learn that in P