ndistas_, more numerous and daring than the
bands of _aduaneros_ and the armies of regulars whom they set at
defiance, and infests the coast of Spain with fleets of smuggling craft,
which all the _guardas costas_, with the ancient armada of Spain, were
it in existence, would be powerless to annihilate. And all this fine
nation, of warm and generous temperament, of naturally noble and
virtuous aspirations, thus desperately to be dismantled of its
once-proud attributes, and demoralized in its character; its exhaustless
riches of soil and climate to be wantonly wasted--per force of false
legislation to be left uncultured--and for why? Shades of the
illustrious Gabarrus and Jovellanos, why? Why, to enable some half dozen
_fabricantes_ of Barcelona to keep less than half-a-dozen steam-engines
at work, which shall turn some few thousands of spindles, spinning and
twisting some few millions of pounds of yarn, by which, after nearly
three quarters of a century that the cotton manufacture has been
planted, "swathed, rocked, and dandled" with legislative fondness into a
rickety nursling, some fifty millions of yards of cotton cloths are said
to be painfully brought forth in the year; the value of which may
probably be equal to the same or a larger quantity of French cottons
introduced by contraband, and consumed in the provinces of Catalonia and
Arragon themselves--the first being sole seat of the cotton manufacture
for all Spain. And for this deplorable consummation, the superabundant
harvests of the waving fields, the luscious floods of the vineyards, the
full flowing yield of the olive groves of Spain--of the wine, the oil,
and the corn, of which nature is more bountiful than in Egypt of
old--the produce and the wealth of the millions, (which, permitted,
would exchange advantageously for foreign products, and, bye all the
value, add to the store of national wealth, and create the means of
reproduction,) are left to run waste and absolutely perish on the
ground, as not worth the cost of transport to markets without demand.
"The production of this soil," observes the Ayuntamiento of Malaga, in
their eloquent _Exposicion_ to the Cortes cited in our last Number,
after referring to their own port and province, in whose elaboration
thousands and thousands of hands are employed, millions and millions of
capital invested, "are consumed, if not in totality, at least with close
approximation, in England;" and after enumerating the wines,