wishes of the proprietor at his death. Not
only are all large estates broken up and practically dissipated, so that
it is to no one's interest to improve his property or spend money on it,
but the small farms of the peasant proprietor are broken into smaller
fragments in the same way; and it is no uncommon thing to see a field of
a few acres divided into six or eight furrows, none of them enough to
support one man. While he has to go off seeking work where he can get
it, his strip of land clings to him like a curse, for he must lose his
work if he would try to cultivate it, and at his death it will again be
subdivided, until at last there is nothing left to share. Meanwhile, the
land, which is not enough to be of any value to anyone, has been allowed
to go almost out of cultivation; or if it bear anything at all, it is
weeds.

Until some remedy be found for this enervating system, it would seem as
if Spanish agriculture is doomed to remain in its present unsatisfactory
condition over a great part of the kingdom. The improvement of
agriculture is practically a question of private enterprise, and under
the existing law of inheritance neither enterprise nor interest can be
expected of the small proprietor; nor indeed of the large landowner, who
knows that, whatever he may do to improve his estate, it is doomed to be
cut to pieces and divided amongst his next of kin until it is eventually
extinguished. Whether, in some future time, an enlightened scheme of
co-operation could work the arid lands into cultivation again, if the
Government would give the necessary aid in the form of irrigation,
remains among the unanswered riddles of the future. Prophecy in Spain is
never possible; it is always the unexpected which happens in that
country of sharp contradictions. All one can do is to note past progress
and the drift of the present current, which, whatever government is at
the nominal head of affairs, seems to be towards widespread--in fact,
quite general--advance both in knowledge and industrial activity.

The greatest hope for the future lies in the fact that it is no longer
foreign money or foreign labour that is working for the good of the
country; the impulse is from within, and every penny of capital that is
sunk in public works, manufactures, or industrial enterprise, is so much
invested in a settled state of affairs. When the individual has
everything to lose by revolutionary changes, when the commerce of the
country is