VII. 1814. with her settlements in all parts of the world, and fleets CHAP. capable for long of maintaining an equal conflict with the mistress of the seas, since she lost them her foreign trade has sunk to nothing, and her fleet, the successor of the invincible Armada, has dwindled to two ships of the line and three frigates.* 7. rule of old her colonies. Although the prosperity of the Spanish colonies had become such that they contained, when the Revolution Tyrannical severed them from old Spain, nineteen millions of inha- Spain over bitants, and carried on an export and import trade with it of above £16,000,000 sterling in all, yet this had arisen chiefly from the bounty of nature and the resources of wealth which they themselves enjoyed, and in no degree from the government of the parent state. Its administration had been illiberal, selfish, and oppressive in the very highest degree. It was founded mainly on three bases-1. The establishment of the Romish faith in its most bigoted form, and the absolute exclusion and refusal even of toleration to every other species of worship; 2. The exclusive enjoyment of all offices of trust and emolument in the colonies, and especially the working and direction of the mines of gold and silver, by persons appointed by the Spanish government at Madrid; 3. The entire monopoly of the whole trade with the colonies to the merchants and shipping of the mother country, especially those of Cadiz and Corunna, whom its immense profits had long elevated to the rank of merchant princes. Here the radical selfishness and shortsighted views of human nature appeared in their full deformity; and accordingly, as these were the evils which depressed the ener + Imports and Exports of Spain to her colonies in 1809: Exports, Imports, 59,200,000 piastres, or £15,200,000 -HUMBOLDT, Nouvelle Espagne, iv. 153, 154. See also ante, c. iv. 107, where the details are given. Exports of Great Britain to her whole colonies in VII. 1814. CHAP. gies and cramped the efforts of the colonies, the prevailing feeling which produced the revolution, and the war-cry which animated its supporters, were for the opposite set of immunities. Liberation from Romish tyranny, selfgovernment, and free trade with all the world, were inscribed on the banners of Bolivar and San Martin, and in the end proved victorious in the conflict. Happy if they had known to improve their victory by moderation, and exercise the powers it had won with judgment; and if the liberated states had not fallen under a succession of tyrants of their own creation, so numerous that history has not attempted to record their succession, and so savage that it recoils from the portrait of their deeds. 8. all with foreign manufactures. Although, too, the trade which Spain carried on with. The trade of her colonies was so immense anterior to the revolution in Spain was Spanish America, yet we should widely err if we imagined that it consisted of the manufactures raised or worked up in Spain itself; on the contrary, it consisted almost entirely of manufactured articles produced in Holland, Flanders, Germany, and England, brought by their merchants to the vast warehouses of Cadiz and Corunna, and transported thence beyond the Atlantic. The government of Madrid was entirely swayed in these matters by the merchants of these great seaport towns; and their interest was wound up with the preservation of the monopoly of the trade, and by no means extended to the production of the manufactures. On the contrary, they were rather interested in keeping up the purchase of the articles which the colonies required from foreign states, for they enjoyed in that way in some degree a double transit, first from the seat of the manufactures in Britain or Belgium to Cadiz and Corunna, and again from thence to the American shores. Spain, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government to encourage them, had never possessed any considerable manufactures; and even if the merchants engaged in the colonial trade had wished it, they could not have found in their VII. 1814. own country the articles of which their colonies stood in CHAP. need. Thus the traffic with those colonies, great as it was, did little to enrich the country in general. It created colossal fortunes in the merchants of Cadiz and Corunna, of the Havanna or Buenos Ayres, but nothing more— like the railway traffic from London to Liverpool and Manchester, which does much for the wealth of these great towns at either end of the line, but comparatively little for the intermediate country along the sides of the communication between them. The causes of this peculiarity are to be found in the peculiarities of its physical circumstances, national character, and long-established policy, which have deprived old Spain of nearly all the advantages of her magnificent colonies, and afford the true, though hitherto unobserved, key to her long decline. 1. The first of these is to be found in the national character and temperament, the real source from which, Want of here as everywhere else, more even than its physical the national or political circumstances, its fortunes and destiny have character. flowed. The races whose mingled blood have formed the heterogeneous population of old Spain, have none of them, excepting the Moors, been remarkable for their industrial habits. Tenacious of custom, persevering in inclination, repugnant to change, the original inhabitants of the country, with whom the Legions maintained so long and doubtful a conflict, were, like all the other families of the Celtic race, formidable enemies, indomitable guerillas, but by no means either laborious husbandmen or industrious arti The Visigoths, who poured through the passes of the Pyrenees, and overspread the country to the Pillars of Hercules, added nothing to their industrious habits, but much to their warlike propensities: from them sprang Pelayo and the gallant defenders of the Asturian hills, but not either the cultivators of the fields or the manufacturers of the towns; from them sprang Pizarro and Cortes, and the conquerors of the New World, but neither a Penn or a Franklin, nor the hardy pioneers of civilisa 9. industry in VII. 1814. 10. The physi cal circum stances of Spain favoured but not CHAP. tion in its wastes. The Moors alone, who at one time had nearly wrested all Spain from the Christians, and established themselves for a very long period on the banks of the Guadalquivir, were animated by the real spirit of industry, and great was the wealth and prosperity of their provinces to the south of the Sierra Morena. But religious bigotry tore up from the state this source of wealth; and the banishment, three hundred years ago, of nearly a million of its most industrious and orderly citizens, deprived Spain as a similar measure, at a later period, did France-of the most useful and valuable portion of its inhabitants, and with them of the most important advantages she could have derived from her colonial settlements. 2. The physical circumstances and peculiarities of Spain, and the pursuits to which its inhabitants were for the most part of necessity driven, were such as favoured nautical and commercial, as much as they obstructed macommerce, nufacturing pursuits. Placed midway between the Old manufac- and the New World, with one front washed by the waves of the Atlantic, and another by the ripple of the Mediterranean, with noble and defensible harbours forming the access to both, she enjoyed the greatest possible advantages for foreign commerce; and accordingly, even in the days of Solomon, the merchants of Tarshish rivalled those of Tyre in conducting the traffic of the then known world. But she had little natural advantages for interior traffic or manufactures. The mountainous nature of the greater part of the country rendered internal intercourse difficult; the entire want of roads, save the great chaussées from Madrid to Bayonne, Cadiz, Barcelona, Badajos, and Valencia, made it impossible. What little traffic there was off these roads, was all carried on on the backs of mules. Having little or no coal, and few of the forests which in France supply in some degree its want, she had none of the advantages for manufacturing industry which that invaluable mineral has furnished to northern Europe, enabling the inhabitants of Great Britain to tures. VII. 1814. reap the whole advantages of their own colonies, and CHAP. great part of those of Spain, by supplying the former directly, and the latter by the merchants of Cadiz and Corunna, or the contraband trade in the West Indies, with the greater part of the manufactured articles which they required. Hence it was that the Spanish merchants sought the materials of their traffic in Belgium or Lancashire, and that the manufacturers of Flanders and England, not Spain, reaped the principal advantages arising from the growth of its colonial dominion. 11. the long hostility with the Moors. 3. If the physical circumstances of Spain were such as almost to preclude the possibility of manufacturing indus- Effect of try arising among its inhabitants, its history had still more continued clearly marked their character and occupations. Their annals for five centuries are nothing but a continual conflict with the Moors. These ruthless invaders, as formidable and devastating in war as they were industrious and orderly in peace, spread gradually from the rock of Gibraltar to the foot of the Pyrenees. They were at last expelled, but it was only after five hundred years of almost incessant combats. These combats were not, for a very long period, the battles of great armies against each other, but the ceaseless conflicts of small forces or guerilla bands, among whom success and defeat alternated, and to whom at length the predominance was given to Spain only by the perseverance and energy of the Spanish character. It was the wars of the Heptarchy or of the Anglo-Saxons with the Danes, continued, not till the reign of Alfred, but to that of Henry VII. Incalculable was the effect of this long-continued and absorbing hostility upon the bent and disposition of the Spanish mind. much as eight centuries of unbroken peace, during which the southern counties of England have never seen the fires of an enemy's camp, have formed the English, have the five centuries of Moorish warfare stamped their impress on the Spanish character. Engrossing every thought, animating every desire, directing every passion in the coun As |