Cuba would be a distinct gain to the mother
country, and perhaps it may be safely said that since the colony had not
only been for so many years the forcing-house of bureaucratic
corruption, but had also drained the resources of Spain both of money
and lives to the extreme limit of her possibility, she is more likely
now to regain her old position among European nations, when left at
peace to develop her enormous resources and set her house in order
without the distraction of war, either at home or abroad. When one
remembers that this happy condition has never obtained in the country
since the death of Ferdinand VII. until the close of the
Spanish-American War, and that the country is only now recovering from
the disorganisation caused by the return of her troops and refugees from
Cuba and Manila, it is not surprising to find that the activity
manifested in her trade, her manufactures, and her industries is such as
to give the greatest hopes for her future to her own people and to those
who watch her from afar with friendly eyes.

Whichever we may regard as cause or effect, the progress of the country
has been very largely identified with the extension of her railway
system. It must have been a great step towards liberal education when
the country which, priding herself on her geographical position and her
rich internal resources, had hitherto wrapped herself in her national
_capa_, and considered that she was amply sufficient to herself,
condescended to throw open her mountain barriers to immigrants. It was
not until 1848 that the first Spanish railway was opened, and it was but
seventeen miles in length; but in the next ten years five hundred miles
had been constructed, and between 1858 and 1868 no fewer than two
thousand eight hundred and five miles, the Pyrenees had been pierced,
and direct communication with the rest of Europe accomplished.

During the troublous years following the Revolution and the melancholy
struggles of the second Carlist war, very little progress was made.
Foreign capital, which had hitherto been invested in Spanish railways,
was naturally frightened away, and the Northern Railway itself, the
great artery to France, was constantly being torn up and damaged, and
the lives of the passengers endangered, by the armed mobs which infested
the country, and were supposed by some people to represent the cause of
legitimacy, and which had, in fact, the sanction of the Church and of
the Pope. It was not