r both of them gets tired of the expense,
and the case is decided, the other, if he be a rich man, can refer the
whole affair to Spain, where the same pleadings have to be again gone
through, and all the vexation and expense re-incurred, besides that the
decision of the case may with a little management be protracted for any
indefinite length of time. This is not worse than what happens at home,
and is similar to some of our Scotch cases in former times, when for a
century or more one case would be agitated to gratify family dislike
or prejudice. That no one may think I exaggerate, it may be as well
to mention a case which is still undecided at this moment, and which
originated about 1731, between the lairds of Kilantringan and Miltonise
in Galloway, although near kinsmen, namesakes, and neighbours.

There are few things more dreaded by the Spaniards themselves than
a lawsuit with one another. Many of them, however, are glad of the
chance it gives them to be revenged on people with whom they are not
upon good terms. So vile is the whole law and practice relating to
the testamentary disposal of property, and to such lengths have the
abuses in this particular branch of it gone, that it has become a
proverb among Spaniards to say that a wise man would prefer being
a trustee on an estate, to being heir to it; and several people at
Manilla are well known to be living on their gains from executorships,
&c., having no other means of support. These persons, although their
incomes are almost universally known to be so derived, are not in
the least shunned as dishonest people, but are looked upon as being
perfectly entitled to feather their own nests in place of performing
their duty, as we should understand it to be in Britain.

The police laws and regulations are also badly administered, being
very shameful to the Government which permits things to go on under the
same loose system as before. Were there a more numerous and efficient
police force scattered over the country, none of the Spaniards would be
afraid, as many of them now actually are, to live out of town, or to
make distant excursions to the country, from fear of the _tulisanes_,
or robber-bands, which are scattered about in various places, and are
found pursuing their avocations in the neighbourhood of the capital,
although not so boldly as they did a few years since. These robbers
plunder the country in bands perfectly organized, and bodies of them
are generally ex