usly disproportionate balance, and administer to the wants of the
community? Can we wonder that the powers of native production should be
so bound down, and territorial revenue so comparatively diminutive, when
exchanges are so hampered by fiscal and protective rapacity? Canga
Arguelles, the first Spanish financier and statistician of his day,
calculated the territorial revenue of Spain at 8,572,220,592 reals, say,
in sterling, L.85,722,200; whilst he asserts, with better cultivation,
population the same, the soil is capable of returning ten times the
value. As a considerable proportion of the revenue of Spain is derived
from the taxation of land, the prejudice resulting to the treasury is
alone a subject of most important consideration. For the proprietary,
and, in the national point of view, as affecting the well-being of the
masses, it is of far deeper import still. And what is the financial
condition of Spain, that her vast resources should be apparently so
idle, sported with, or cramped? Take the estimates, the budget,
presented by the minister _De ca Hacienda_, for the past year of 1842:--

Revenue 1842, 879,193,400 reals
Id. expenditure, 1,541,639,800 id.
-------------
Deficit on the year, 662,446,400

Thus, with a revenue of L.8,791,934, an expenditure of L.15,416,398, and
a deficit of L.6,624,460, the debt of Spain, foreign and domestic, is
almost an unfathomable mystery as to its real amount. Even at this
present moment, it cannot be said to be determined; for that amount
varies with every successive minister who ventures to approach the
question. Multifarious have been the attempts to arrive at a clear
liquidation--that is, classification and ascertainment of claims; but
hitherto with no better success than to find the sum swelling under the
labour, notwithstanding national and church properties confiscated,
appropriated, and exchanged away against _titulos_ of debt by millions.
It is variously estimated at from 120 to 200 millions sterling, but say
150 millions, under the different heads of debt active, passive, and
deferred; debt bearing interest, debt without interest, and debt
exchangeable in part--that is, payable in certain fixed proportions, for
the purchase of national and church properties. For a partial
approximation to relative quantities, we must refer the reader, for want
of better authority, to Fenn's "Compendium of the English and Foreign
Funds"--a work co