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CHAP. the contrast between their extensive information and general knowledge of the world, and the narrow ideas of the spiritual militia who had hitherto been their sole instructors. The contrast was rendered the more striking, from the brilliant career which had attended at first the arms of France, then those of England, when compared with the almost uniform defeats which their own had sustained. Hence the armies of Spain, as indeed those of all the Continental monarchies, retired from the conflict deeply imbued with democratic principles; and the officers, especially, were generally impressed with the belief that nothing but the establishment of these was wanting to open a boundless career of prosperity to their country, of promotion and elevation to themselves.

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8. But if the army was an important, it might be a The Church. decisive ally to the democratic party in the towns, the royalists in the country had a force for their support equally numerous, equally zealous, and still better disciplined and docile to their chiefs. The CHURCH WAS unanimous in favour of the crown and the establishment of arbitrary power: an unerring instinct told them that freedom of thought would inevitably lead to freedom of action, and the termination of their long-established dominion. Their numbers were immense, their possessions extensive. A hundred thousand priests, doomed to celibacy in a country suffering under the want of hands, and capable of maintaining, with ease and comfort, at least double its number of inhabitants, were diffused over its whole extent, and in all the rural districts, at least, exercised an unlimited sway over the minds of their flocks. Essentially obedient to the voice of their spiritual chiefs, which was everywhere governed by the commands issuing from the conclave of the Vatican, the efforts of this immense body of spiritual militia were entirely devoted to one object-the re-establishment of despotic power, in its most unmitigated form, over the whole Peninsula. The policy of the court of Rome was directed to this object

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in Spain and Portugal, from the same motive which led CHAP. it to support the democratic propensities of the Romish Church in Ireland. In both cases, regardless of the real welfare of the people of their persuasion, they were governed by one motive-the furtherance of the power and extension of the influence of their own establishment. In the Peninsula, this was to be done by aiding despotic power against democratic infidelity; in the British Islands, by supporting democratic ambition against heretical power. But when the vast influence and wide-spread possessions of the clergy are taken into consideration, and the absolute direction which they had of the minds and opinions of their followers in all the rural districts and many of the towns, it was a most formidable enemy with which the republicans had to contend, and it was doubtful whether, in a protracted struggle, victory might not incline to the side which it espoused.

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peasantry.

9. This influence and importance, in a political point of view, of the clergy, was the more important, from, gene- State of the rally speaking, the comfortable and prosperous condition of the peasantry, and their entire submission to the voice of their pastors. If the clergy were a zealous and admirably trained phalanx of officers for the church militant, the peasantry composed an incomparable body of private soldiers. Sober, abstemious, regular, and yet ardent and capable of great things, the Spanish peasant is the one in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of the Polish, who most readily forms a good soldier, and is most easily induced to undertake his duties. The five centuries of incessant warfare with the Moors had nurtured this tendency; the benignity of the climate, and absence of artificial wants among the peasantry, have rendered it easy of retention. The Castilian or Catalonian loses little by leaving his home and joining a guerilla band in the mountains; his fare remains the same, his habits are little different, the sphere of his achievements is much extended. The roving adventurous life of partisan

VOL. II.

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CHAP. warfare, with its hairbreadth escapes and occasional triumphs, suits his tastes and rouses his ambition. Unlike the peasant of Northern Europe, the Spanish cultivator is never worn down by the labours, or depressed by the limited ideas, of daily toil. Blessed with a benignant climate, tilling a fruitful soil, or wandering over vast downs after immense flocks, he can satisfy his few wants with a comparatively small amount of actual labour. The greater part of his life is spent in doing nothing, or in such exercises as nourish rather than depress his warlike disposition. "The Spaniards," says Chateaubriand, "are Christian Arabs they unite the savage and the religious character. The mingled blood of the Cantabrian, the Carthaginian, the Roman, the Vandal, and the Moor, which flows in their veins, flows not as other blood. They are at once active, indolent, and grave.' "Every grave nation," says Montesquieu, in discoursing of them, "is indolent; for those who do not labour consider themselves as masters of those who do. In that country liberty is injured by independence. Of what value are civil privileges to a man who, like the Bedouin, armed with the lance and followed by his sheep, has no need of food beyond a few acorns, figs, or olives?" The dolce far niente is as dear to the Spaniard as to the inhabitant of the Ausonian fields; but the precious hours of rest are not spent in listless inactivity: they are cheered by the recital of the ballads, or the recounting of the stories which recall the glories, the dangers, the adventures of war. There was scarcely one at this time who had not his musket suspended over his hearth, which had been used in the guerilla warfare with the French, and his tale to recount of the indignities endured, or the vengeance taken, or the surprises achieved, in the conflict with those ruthless invaders. Mutual benefits and dependence, and a long Congr. de series of kind actions and good deeds, performed by the parochial clergy to their flocks, had endeared them to the whole rural population; and it was easy to see

1 Chateaub.

Verone, i.

12, 13.

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that if any civil warfare ensued they would take the side, CHAP. whichever it was, which was espoused by their spiritual directors.

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nobility.

10. So great was the influence of the clergy, and so loyal the feelings of the peasantry, that they would in all State of the probability have enabled the king to resist all the efforts of the malcontents, had there been any body of efficient and united landed proprietors in the country. But none such existed in Spain. Generally speaking, the clergy were the sole leaders of the people. There were many nobles in Spain, and they were inferior to none in the world in pride and aristocratic pretension; but they had neither political power nor rural influence. Nearly all absentees, residing the whole year round in Madrid, they had none of that sway over the minds of their tenantry which is enjoyed by landed proprietors who have attached them by a series of kind acts during many generations: intrusted with no political power, they had no weight in national deliberations, or authority in the affairs of Government. The grandees of Spain, who cherished the purity of their descent as carefully as the Arabs do the pedigree of their steeds, and who would admit of, and indeed could contract, no marriage where sixteen quarterings could not be counted on both sides, had incurred the penalty prescribed by nature for such overweening pride and selfishness. They had become a worn-out and degenerate race, considerably below the usual stature of the human frame, and lamentably inferior in vigour, courage, and intelligence. Not one great man arose during the whole of the protracted Peninsular war: few of the generals who did distinguish themselves belonged to the class of grandees. Nevertheless, this selfish fainéant race possessed a great part of the landed property in the kingdom, and by the operation of the strict entails under which it was nearly all held, and the constant intermarriage of the nobility among each other, it was every day running more and more

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CHAP. into a few hands. The greater part of the remaining landed property was in the hands of incorporations, municipalities, or the Church; so that there was perhaps no country in the world which, from its political situation, stood so much in need of an efficient body of rural proprietors, and yet was so entirely destitute of it.

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in the re

the loss of

the South

American colonies.

11. It was scarcely possible that a monarchy so situHuge gap ated, distracted by such passions, and divided by so many venue from opposite interests, could long escape the convulsions of civil War; but it was accelerated, and the means of averting it were taken away, by the peculiar circumstances in which, on the restoration of Ferdinand in 1814 to the throne of his ancestors, the FINANCES of the country stood. From the causes which have been mentioned, the industry and resources of old Spain had declined to such a degree, that little revenue was to be derived from taxation at home; while, on the other hand, the gold and silver mines in the hands of Government in the colonies had become so prolific that the chief revenue of the state had long been derived from its transmarine possessions, and the principal attention of Government was fixed on their maintenance. The income derived by Spain from her colonies, anterior to the Revolution, amounted to 38,000,000 piastres, or £9,500,000-fully a half of the whole revenue, at that period, of the Spanish crown. It is true, about £7,500,000 of this sum was absorbed in expenses connected with the colonies themselves, leaving only £2,000,000 available to the royal treasury at Madrid; but still it was by this vast colonial expenditure, and the establishment it enabled the king to keep up, that nearly the whole power and influence of Government was maintained. It was the gold of Mexico and Peru that paid the armies and civil servants, and upheld nearly the entire sway of the court of Madrid. Now, however, this source of influence was gone. The revolution in South America had cut off fully a half of the whole revenue of Spain; and

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