SPAIN AND HER REVOLUTION.
1 Adam Street, Adelphi Mk September 1854. Six—When a question of who shall make the rail can revolutionize a country, it is demonstrative primarily of two things—a great desire to be doing, and a great lack of things to be done ; not the absence of wants, but the absence of any legitimate mode of getting to work to supply the wants. And this is the normal condition of Spain. The prospect of anything where- by money is to be made beyond the commonest drudging labour, sets it in a ferment from one end to the other. Strange as it may seem, Spain has never yet been a country in the national sense of the word. The French sarcasm truly expresses its condition—" Africa beyond the Pyrenees." It is the country of a Sultan divided into pashalics under the name of provinces, and governed by a Grand Vizier who may be changed from day to day. It is neither more nor less corrupt than Turkish administration in Asia; and the people enjoy and endure social freedom and political tyranny together. The divan or capital is an anomaly, a mere geographical centre, that adds a large percentage to the expenses of government—a place where there is no material work to be done, and where pashas in and out of place hold the centre of a great spider's web stronger than usual, to gather black mail from every nascent industry. Spain is not a nation, but a mere bundle of disunited pro- vinces, each of which is as alien to the others as Portugal itself—a kind of Egypt that has thrown off the yoke of the Spanish Sultan, and holds the great sea-gates of Spain, the mouths of her large rivers that reach to the ocean. This condition of things would be absolutely marvellous were it not for the entire absence of roads, 1. e. roads by which traffic and general tra- velling could be accomplished—maivellous, inasmuch as all the other cir- cumstances that constitute a great nation are to be found. Materials and the means of creating produce are in abundance, and there is absolutely no country in the world possessing a people of higher intellectual acuteness or more patient industry, or, all things considered, a higher morality indivi- dually. Let England, Scotland, and Ireland, be placed in the condition of Spain for twenty-five years—if that were possible—by a disputed succession, and laws made only by military despots, changing from month to month, and we should present a spectacle from which people would fly for refuge to Spain. Sovereigns and Ministers dwell in Madrid—not to rule in the sense of making order straight, but simply to collect taxes, paying soldiers only for that purpose ; the Minister and his Prmtorians or Sartonana for the time b. ing laying hands on everything, less the pay of the troops and the dis- sipations of the sovereign. A factitious capital, with a factitious popula- tion, brutalized by their only pleasure, the circus, and scantily fed—" pa- nem et cireenses"—will cease to exist from the moment that the shackles shall fall from Spanish industry.. When some true sovereign shall dwell elsewhere, and carry away the Spanish boast, the picture-gallery, Madrid will gradually become as Palmyra, a heap of ruins, even to the magnificent royal palace that no one will think worth repairing, and where no more sentinels will be frozen to death by " the wind that slays a man, while it would not blow out a candle." But where is the master hand that shall unshackle the energies of Spain ? Where is the gripe that shall hold her provinces together till they be fused P Where the "sic vole sic jubeo" that shall never will or order aught but stern justice, that master power over the minds of all natural men ; and in which men Spain, not Madrid, abounds ? Who, singly, shall grasp the army and rule it, and make it know him for its master, and with that army make all Spain do his bidding implicitly ?—for no man not strong enough in material power can dwell in Madrid, and be believed in by the provinces as a poli- tical saviour. He must wield the outward symbol till he has pulled down Madrid and all its abominations, and built up a whole nation around it. The circus, the emblem of physical brutality, must be no more—the Prado, the emblem of woman's frivolity and court sensuality, must be no more—no longer representatives of national habits—ere the great heart of the nation can arouse to its true life, so long bound in feverish slumber. In the old time, in England, our land was shired—sheared—shred into fragments, and sectioned into parts, and a Yorkshireman or Lancashire man was in social feud with Middlesex men, while their very dialects were a signal for mutual vituperation ; and we only left oft' our bull-baits when we improved our transit. So in Spain, the mountain boundaries marked distinct habits and customs ; and the only appliances that can break down their tribal feuds- roads—are utterly lacking, save for the privileged orders. Men, and still more so women, are born and die in their native parishes, and talk of Ma- drid as a marvel that they have been told of, even as in the days of Gil Blas. A man, then, is lacking to Spain—one who can make his will absolute, and by his will can intersect her with roads, railways. There is no lack of en- gineering faculty in Spain, the lack has been of the honesty to employ it effectively. There is an abundance of rising young men willing to work for very moderate remuneration. There is abundance of laborious industry, to which absence of work is a privation. Thirty miles from Madrid, I once be- held some two thousand peasants bivouacked on the bare ground for many days, waiting for the novel kind of work the railway engineer was preparing for them ; and a speculative provision-dealer erected some long ranges of buildings, which he christened by a Greek name, as a lodging for them, when the current coin for their daily labour might be forthcoming. But their economy was more than a match for him. Their lodging was on the cold (or hot) ground,-21d. per night cheaper than the would-be Tommy- shop of Old Castile. These people gathered the earth into baskets, and car- ried it on their heads to make embankments, like Egyptians. Another gene- ration will use the barrow and plank as deftly as a Lancashire-bred navvy. It is not industry that is wanting, not capital that is wanting, not skill that is wanting; only law and order. At the outset in England, our system of railway-making was by letting and subletting, and again subletting con- tracts, whereby one man with only pen and ink, on one line of fifty miles, realized 400,0001. in less thin two years, still leaving ample profit to his subs, and finally leaving good wages to the delvers and shovel-men. Yet a national save-all was this contractor, taking the cash from inert share- holders, and converting it to numberless active purposes. In Spain, too, there are these men, taking first contracts per Ministerial favour or Minis- terial bargain, at twenty reels, subletting at ten, and so on, till at last the actual " blue blood " of Castile, the swarthy Titan up-heaver of the brown earth—the dust that grows wheat and grapes and olives—is brought down to three ; great part of which are made to accumulate in his kid-skin bag, by an economy more than Irish. It is not industry or saving that is the want of Spain. There are travellers who in hot weather behold Spauish la- bourers listless. Is not Saint Monday regularly kept in hot weather in England ? Work for work, and pay for pay, and guidance for guidance, a Castellano, a Viscayno, a Gallego, will do as much work as an Englishman, and with quite as much intelligence. But with sea-coast customhouses, and inland customhouses, and with Government manufactures of tobacco and salt, with an eternal system of smuggling, and an indefinite power of taxing everything that may be profitable, it is not strange that the only in- tellectual industry which is pursued is that of obtaining monopolies by bribes.
The despotism of a single individual would be the only possible cheap go- vernment for Spain at the present time. A government to conciliate all parties could only result in providing national stipends for all parties ; and Spain has not yet sufficiently developed her wealth for that. She did it in the old time, when America was her treasury and the Casa del Oro (the Golden Store) was not an empty name at Seville ; and she might do it again from the resources of her own industry, but not now. The true mode of producing revenue for Spain would be to proclaim free trade—i. e. a mode- rate percentage ad-valorem duty on the bulky articles of every ship's mani- fest coming to a Spanish port, whether native or foreign. Her mines, her fruits, her corn, wine, and oil, would then be rapidly worked ; and the pro- cess would be near ly self-acting. No legion of customhouse-officers would then be wanted to assist in smuggling. A stringent law on false manifests, and well-paid collectors under a justice-doing despot, would soon produce a re- venue ; and Barcelona would continue to supply her cotton-mills with goods from England direct, as she now does, without the need of putting on the Spanish customhouse marks in Manchester. So long as Spain is kept in a condition of Boeotian rudeness, so long will inquietude prevail, from unused faculties. To employ her latent energy, she must be a commercial country, must buy and sell. To do this, she must have railways to transport her produce and bring her people in contact with each other, from the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. This done, Spain and England would become as colonies to each other, linked bythe closest bonds of mutual advantages. And there does not appear any reason why the railways of Spain—i.e. the levels, embankments, viaducts, cuttings, and bridges—should not be laid out by their Government engineers, and exe- cuted by the soldiers, who must be maintained till peace and order shall be- come a normal condition of the country. Our own Sappers and Miners are a sample of what can be done with soldiery not wanted for fighting ; and the Spanish intellect would make rapid progress. Soldiers do not dislike work, especially when extra pay is the result : on the contrary, mutiny amongst privates and disorderly conduct amongst officers are, together with diseases, a common result of idleness.
Either the Government must make the lines themselves or grant conces- sions to private companies. In the latter case, an enormous premium must be given on account of the apparent risk. If the Government make the lines, as in France, and by the work of soldiers, it would be a comparatively easy thing to procure rails and rolling-stock in exchange for produce. Spain might thus procure her railways with comparative ease, and with a contented soldiery, earning good wages, and not liable to be made the tools of plotting generals.
The history of Spain is that of a brave people warring for centuries to throw off foreign dominators—winning province after province, and erecting each into a limited monarchy under the successful leader for the time being ; then the gradual aggregation of the monarchies, without the aggregation of the peoples subject to them; then a tyranny, finally cemented by the judicial murder of the patriot Antonio Perez under the walls of Zaragoza, by the tyrant monarch who thus sealed the destruction of political freedom while leaving a considerable amount of social equality ; and from that time to this Spaniards have bowed themselves quietly down before the name of king, whatever might be the worthlessness or viciousness of the individual wear- ing the crown.
But not, therefore, has the inherent genius or valour of the people disap- peared. In front of the Palace of the Cortes stands the metal semblance of the great writer of Spain, the one-armed hero who fought in Lepanto's fight to help Christendom against the then tyrant Moslem; poetry, humour, and valour combined. To this very day is the humour of the Spanish race the keenest in the world ; their language is poetry ; and for their valour, let Zaragoza speak—give them again a Pelayo and a Cid, they would revive the deeds of old. They cannot do this under the degenerate race of fribbles that now calls itself nobility. Living portraits of Quevedo, the satirist of kings, are to be met at every street-corner. Farce-writers prolific as Lope de Vega, as witty and as worthless, would start up like mushrooms, were their pay us high ; and the moral grandeur of Calderon would not be found all lost, were the Church purified from the abominations of those now cull- ing themselves her servants. The paintings of Murillo and Velasquez show what Spanish art once was, and might be again, when the growing wealth of the general community shall be to artists what the national wealth and the wealth of the churches once was. It is a desirable thing for England that Spain should grow to be a great nation. No Southern European people are so kindred to us in habits of thought and modes of action. In no country are they so much at home as in England ; and no people are more popular in Spain than Englishmen. Spanish men, and the old seafaring race of Portugal, are our natural allies ; and we ought to use our whole endeavour to make them one people, engaged in constant free trade with ourselves, ex- changine.' food for the other necessaries of life. The Peninsula is our na- tional garden and hothouse, our outlying farm on the opposite shores of the bay whose name rings in our naval annals. The workshops of the Penin- sula will be Cis-Biscayan for scores of years to come.
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