here there is no humility, how shall there be acquisition of
knowledge? Pangloss might here have found his perfect world."

It is, we fear, this Bobadil vein, this unbounded self-approval and
vain-gloriousness, entailing an unwillingness to acknowledge obligations,
and an impatience of feeling that they have received any, which renders a
large proportion of Spaniards less amicably disposed towards England than
we might expect them to be, when we look at the recent history of the two
countries, and recall all the friendly offices Spain has received at the
hands of England. We have ourselves noticed amongst Spaniards--even
amongst men of good average intelligence and education--a fretful sort of
feeling whenever the support for which their country has been indebted to
Great Britain was alluded to. Some of them go so far as to endeavour to
persuade the world, and more especially themselves, that the parts played
by English and Spaniards in the Peninsular War were the converse of what
is usually supposed--that it was Spanish valour, skill, and generalship
that swept Napoleon's armies before them, and drove his best commanders
across the Pyrenees. The English were there, certainly; they were very
useful, but they played second fiddle to their allies on most occasions.
In short, to hear many of the present generation of Spaniards talk, one
might suppose that it was their ill-disciplined, badly-officered troops
which won the numerous hard-fought fields of the War of Independence.

Another subject of difference, and a far more serious one than these petty
ranklings of offended pride and ill-borne obligation, is the slave-trade,
and the right of search. Persuade Spaniards, or Frenchmen, or any nation
in the world, if you can, that Great Britain added twenty millions to her
debt, impoverished her own colonial proprietors, and still goes to a heavy
annual expense for the suppression of the slave traffic, with any other
view than a very decided one to her own benefit. To Spain, thanks to the
wretched administration of her internal resources, the revenue derived
from her few remaining colonies is a great object; and in our hostility to
the slave-trade, she beholds a direct attack on that source of income.
Again, in the present depressed state of Spanish commerce, a large portion
of the commercial capital of the country is invested in the slave-trade;
and a constant bitter feeling towards the English is consequently kept up
amongst th