ishermen, yielded by
their employers, who farm the fisheries, and having satisfied the king,
make what terms they can with the subject.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL POLICY--RUSSIA.

From the brief review, in our last Number, of Spain, her commercial
policy, her economical resources, her fiscal rigours, her financial
embarrassments, these facts may be said to have been developed:--In the
first place, that theoretically--that is, so far as legislation--Spain
is the land of restrictions and prohibitions; and that the principle of
protection in behalf, not of nascent, but of comparatively ancient and
still unestablished interests, is recognized, and carried out in the
most latitudinarian sense of absolute interdict or extravagant impost.
Secondly, that under such a system, Spain has continued the exceptional
case of a non or scarcely progressing European state; that the
maintenance and enhancement of fiscal rigours and manufacturing
monopoly, jealously fenced round with a legislative wall of prohibition
and restriction, has neither advanced the prosperity of the quarter of a
million of people in Catalonia, Valencia, and Biscay, in whose exclusive
behalf the great and enduring interests of the remaining thirteen
millions and upwards of the population have been postponed or
sacrificed--nor contributed to strengthen the financial resources of the
government, as proved by the prostrate position and prospects of a
bankrupt and beggared exchequer; that, as the necessary and inevitable
consequence, the progress of agriculture, the ascendant interest of
all-powerful communities and vast territorially endowed states--of
Spain, the almost one only interest and element of vitality, economical
and political--has been impeded, and continues to be discouraged; that
the march of internal improvements is checked or stunted, when not
absolutely stayed; finally, that public morals--the social health of a
great people, inheritors of glorious antecedents, of an historic renown
for those qualities of a high order, the deep-seated sentiment of
personal, as of national honour and dignity, the integrity, fidelity,
and gallantry, which more loftily spurn contaminating approximation with
action springing out of base, sordid, and degrading motives and
associations--have been sapped and corrupted by the debasing influences
of that gigantic system of organized illicit trade which covers Spain
with hordes of _contraba