commerce; for it will be enough to repeat the phrase that in her eyes the
great ocean from east to west was a Spanish lake, sacred to the ships of
the king's subjects alone. With such a simple code of navigation coming
in aid of the other causes which impoverished the land, it may be
believed that the maritime traffic of the country would dwindle into the
same exiguous proportions which characterised her general industry.

Moreover, it should never be forgotten that, although the various
kingdoms of Spain were politically conjoined by their personal union
under one despot, they were commercially distinct. A line of
custom-houses separated each province from the rest, and made the various
inhabitants of the peninsula practically strangers to each other. Thus
there was less traffic between Castile, Biscay, and Arragon than there
was between any one of them and remote foreign nations. The Biscayans,
for example, could even import and export commodities to and from remote
countries by sea, free of duty, while their merchandize to and from
Castile was crushed by imposts. As this ingenious perversity of positive
arrangements came to increase the negative inconveniences caused by the
almost total absence of tolerable roads, canals, bridges, and other means
of intercommunication, it may be imagined that internal traffic--the very
life-blood of every prosperous nation--was very nearly stagnant in Spain.
As an inevitable result, the most thriving branch of national industry
was that of the professional smuggler, who, in the pursuit of his
vocation, did his best to aid Government in sapping the wealth of the
nation.

The whole accumulated capital of Spain, together with the land--in the
general sense which includes not only the soil but the immovable property
of a country being thus exclusively owned by the crown, the church, and a
very small number of patrician families, while the supply of labour owing
to the special causes which had converted the masses of the people into
paupers ashamed to work but not unwilling to beg or to rob--was
incredibly small, it is obvious that, so long as the same causes
continued in operation, the downfall of the country was a logical result
from which there was no escape. Nothing but a general revolution of mind
and hand against the prevalent system, nothing but some great destructive
but regenerating catastrophe, could redeem the people.

And it is the condition of the people which ought always