oil,
raisins, grapes, oranges, lemons, and almonds, as products so consumed
in this country--"We have active and formidable rivals in France,
Germany, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, the Greek Archipelago, and other
countries. We shall say nothing of the wools, corn and other fruits of
Spain, so important, and some so depressed in England by foreign
competition with those of this province. If the treaties of commerce of
England with Italy and Turkey are carried into effect, the exportation
of our oils and dried fruits will receive its death warrant--_queda
herida demuerte_. France, Germany, and Portugal, accepting favourably
the idea of the British Government, will cause our wines to disappear
from the market; their consumption is already very limited, inasmuch as
the excessive duty, to one-third the amount of which the value of the
wine does not reach, at the mouth of the Thames, prevents the sale of
the inferior dry wines. The same excessive duty tends to diminish the
consumption of our fruits from year to year. Our oil has alone been able
to find vent by favour of the double duty imposed till now upon
Sicilian, superior to ours in quality. But the English speculators are
already shy of purchasing, in the expectation of an assimilation of
duties on oils of whatever origin." The Ayuntamiento proceeds to urge
the necessity of a "beneficial compensation" to British manufactures in
the tariff of Spain, without which, "the flattering perspective" of
prosperous progress for the industry and agriculture of the Andalusias
will be destroyed, and that those vast, rich, and fertile provinces will
become a desolate desert. "The admission or prohibition of foreign woven
cottons," says the _Exposicion_, "is for Malaga and its province of
vital importance under two aspects--of morality and commerce. Until now
we have endured the terrible consequences of prohibition. The exorbitant
gain which it supports is the germ of all the crimes perpetrated in our
country. The man who carries a weapon, who uses it and sheds the blood
of an agent of the law in the defence of his illegally acquired goods,
will not hesitate in shedding the blood of a fellow citizen who may
stand in the way of his desires. And hence the frequent assassinations.
He who with gold seduces others for the increase of his own property and
for antisocial purposes, does not scruple, when fortune is adverse, to
possess himself by violence of the gold of the honest husbandman, or
pea