1,525,000

So, also, why should not Italy and the
Italian islands, with twenty-two millions
of people, be able to consume as much
cotton values as Spain with 13-1/2 millions;
or say only the whole amount really exported
there from this country of 2,005,000?

It is necessary for the interests of truth, for the interests also of
both countries, that the popular mind, the mind of the public men of
Spain also, should be disabused in respect of two important errors. The
first is, that an enormous balance of trade against Spain, that is, of
British exports, licit and illicit too, compared with imports from
Spain--results annually in favour of this country, from the present
state of our commercial exchanges with her. The second is, the greatly
exaggerated notion of the transcendant amount of the illicit trade
carried on with Spain in British commodities, cottons more especially.
In correction of the latter misconception, we have shown that the amount
of British cotton introduced by contraband cannot exceed, _nor equal_,

L.780,640
Instead, as asserted by Senor Marliani, of 1,683,268

And, in correction of the first error
relative to the balance of trade, we have
established the feet by calculations of
approximate fidelity--for exactitude is out
of the question and unattainable with the
materials to be worked up--that an excess
of values, that is, of exports, results to
Spain upon such balance as against imports,
licit and illicit, to the extent per annum
of 550,000

It is therefore Great Britain, and not Spain, which is entitled to
demand that this adverse balance be redressed, and which would stand
justified in retaliating the restrictions and prohibitions on Spanish
products, with which, so unjustly, Spain now visits those of Great
Britain. Far from us be the advocacy of a policy so harsh--we will add,
so unwise; but at least let our disinterested friendship and moderation
be appreciated, and provoke, in reason meet, their appropriate
consideration.

The more formidable, because far more extensive and facile abuses,
arising out of the unparalleled contraband traffic of which Spain is,
and long has been, the theatre, and the attempted repression of which
requires the constant employment of entire armies of regular troops, are
elsewhere to be found in action and guarded against; they concern a
neig