s to special privileges in her
own behalf, which, still tenaciously clinging to Bourbonic traditions of
by-gone times, would affect to annihilate the Pyrenees, and regard Spain
as a dependent possession, reserved for the exclusive profit and the
commercial and political aggrandisement of France. That these
exaggerated pretensions are still entertained as an article of national
faith, from the sovereign on his throne to the meanest of his subjects,
we have before us, at this moment of writing, conclusive evidence in the
report of M. Chegaray, read in the Chamber of Deputies on the 11th of
April last, (_vide Moniteur_ of the 12th,) drawn up by a commission, to
whom was referred the consideration of the actual commercial relations
of France with Spain--provoked by various petitions of the merchants of
Bayonne, and other places, complaining of the prejudice resulting to
their commerce and shipping from certain alterations in the Spanish
customs' laws, decreed by the Regent in 1841. We may have occasion
hereafter to make further reference to this report.

The population of Spain may be rated in round numbers at thirteen
millions and a half, whilst that of the United Kingdom may be taken at
about double the number. With a wise policy, therefore, the interchange
should be of an active and most extensive nature betwixt two countries,
reckoning together more than forty millions of inhabitants, one of
which, with a superficial breadth of territory out of all proportion
with a comparatively thinly-scattered community, abounding with raw
products and natural riches of almost spontaneous growth; whilst the
other, as densely peopled, on the contrary, in comparison with its
territorial limits, is stored with all the elements, and surpasses in
all the arts and productions of manufacturing industry. Unlike France,
Great Britain does not rival Spain in wines, oils, fruits, and other
indigenous products of southern skies, and therefore is the more free to
act upon the equitable principle of fair exchange in values for values.
Great Britain has a market among twenty-seven millions of an active and
intelligent people, abounding in wealth and advanced in the tastes of
luxurious living, to offer against one presenting little more than half
the range of possible customers. She has more; she has the markets of
the millions of her West Indies and Americas--of the tens of millions of
British India, amongst whom a desire for the various fruits and