of
generations of labour and of abstinence, was accordingly not abundant.
And even those accretions of capital, which in the course of centuries
had been inevitable, were as clumsily and inadequately diffused as the
most exquisite human perverseness could desire. If the object of civil
and political institutions had been to produce the greatest ill to the
greatest number, that object had been as nearly attained at last in Spain
as human imperfection permits; the efforts of government and of custom
coming powerfully to the aid of the historical evils already indicated.

It is superfluous to say that the land belonged not to those who lived
upon it--but subject to the pre-eminent right of the crown--to a small
selection of the human species. Moderate holdings, small farms, peasant
proprietorship's, were unknown. Any kind of terrestrial possession; in
short, was as far beyond the reach of those men who held themselves so
haughtily and esteemed themselves so inordinately, as were the mountains
in the moon.

The great nobles--and of real grandees of Spain there were but
forty-nine, although the number of titled families was much larger--owned
all the country, except that vast portion of it which had reposed for
ages in the dead-hand of the Church. The law of primogeniture, strictly
enforced, tended with every generation to narrow the basis of society.
Nearly every great estate was an entail, passing from eldest son to
eldest son, until these were exhausted, in which case a daughter
transferred the family possessions to a new house. Thus the capital of
the country--meagre at best in comparison with what it might have been,
had industry been honoured instead of being despised, had the most
intelligent and most diligent classes been cherished rather than hunted
to death or into obscure dens like vermin--was concentrated in very few
hands. Not only was the accumulation less than it should have been, but
the slenderness of its diffusion had nearly amounted to absolute
stagnation. The few possessors of capital wasted their revenues in
unproductive consumption. The millions of the needy never dreamed of the
possibility of deriving benefit from the capital of the rich, nor would
have condescended to employ it, nor known how to employ it, had its use
in any form been vouchsafed to them. The surface of Spain, save only
around the few royal residences, exhibited no splendour of architecture,
whether in town or country, no wonders of a