Spain is not the country in Europe where one would
expect the social explosion to come first; but more impossible phenomena have been witnessed. The peasantry of the Peninsula have neither acquired the land as the French have done, nor invented a working compromise as the Italians have done, and their discontent is always smouldering. Whenever they get a thane, a little agrarian war breaks out, and it takes troops to make the landowners safe. The workmen of the great cities, though quieter than they were, are still full of Social-Democratic feeling; and the workmen of country districts, the miners especially, listen readily to anarchist teaching. Xeres was only saved from pillage a few days
ago by a hurried despatch of troops, whom the marauders fought; and this week the Government has been so alarmed by a " strike " in Bilbao, that it has proclaimed a state of siege. As we understand, they believe in Madrid that while the miners are really " striking," in the English sense, for more wages and shorter hours, the anarchist leaders are inciting them to much more serious attacks upon property generally. To all appearance, aggrieved labourers in Spain are far too ready to resort to violence ; but it must be re- membered that no clear account of their side of the question ever reaches England.
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