strative detail, and has commenced with the periodical collection
and verification of returns and information from the various ports,
which may serve as the basis--and indispensable for that end they must
be--on which to reform the errors of the present, or raise the
superstructure of a new, fiscal and commercial system. Notwithstanding,
however, the difficulties we are thus exposed to from the lack or
incompleteness of official data on the side of Spain, we hope to present
a body of useful information illustrative of her commerce, industry, and
policy; in especial, we hope to dispel certain grave misconceptions, to
redress signal exaggeration about the extent of the contraband trade,
rankly as it flourishes, carried on along the coasts, and more largely
still, perhaps, by the land frontiers of that country, at least so far
as British participation. Various have been the attempts to establish
correct conclusions, to arrive at some fixed notions of the precise
quantities of that illicit traffic; but hitherto the results generally
have been far from successful, except in one instance. In a series of
articles on the commerce of Spain, published under the head of "Money
Market and City Intelligence," in the months of December and January
last, the _Morning Herald_ was the first to observe and to apply the
data in existence by which such an enquiry could be carried out, and
which we purpose here to follow out on a larger scale, and with
materials probably more abundant and of more recent date.

The whole subject of Spanish commerce is one of peculiar interest, and,
through the more rigorous regulations recently adopted against
smuggling, is at this moment exciting marked attention in France, which,
it will be found with some surprise, is far the largest smuggler of
prohibited commodities into Spain, although the smallest consumer of
Spanish products in return. It is in no trifling degree owing to the
jealous and exclusive views which unhappily prevail with our nearest
neighbour across the Channel, that the prohibitory tariff, scarcely more
adverse to commercial intercourse than that of France after all, which
robs the revenue of Spain, whilst it covers the country with hosts of
smugglers, has not sooner been revised and reformed. France is not
willing to enter into a confederacy of interests with Spain herself, nor
to permit other nations, on any fair equality of conditions, and with
the abandonment of those unjust pretension