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many. At the time when the woollen manufactures of Segovia are said to have been most prosperous, Colmenores describes that city as full of beggars and vagabonds.

The result of our inquiry is, that Spain has possessed, at all times, domestic manufactures for common and ordinary uses; but that at no period of its history which we have examined, could it be ranked among the great manufacturing nations; that, on the contrary, its inhabitants have been always supplied with the finer manufactures from abroad, and even with many articles of accommodation, which in other countries are reckoned of indispensable necessity. It has further appeared, that the only interval during which manufacturing industry made any progress in Spain, was for about a century after the discovery of America, when the new demand created by the colonies excited some faint efforts in the mother country to supply their wants. But these efforts were feeble, spiritless, and of short duration. The genius and prejudices of the people were averse to manufacturing industry; and the bad policy and oppression of the government were able, in these circumstances, first, to depress, and, finally, to extinguish their exertions.

Agriculture and Population.

Of the flourishing state of agriculture, and immense population of Spain in ancient times, we have the same vague and exaggerated accounts which have been left us of its commerce and manufactures. Osorio, who wrote in the time of Charles II., discusses, with the utmost gravity, whether the peninsula of Spain contained fifty or seventy-five millions of souls in the time of Julius Cæsar; and the most moderate calculator reckons at least eighteen millions of inhabitants in Spain, exclusive of Portugal, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. But was Spain better adapted for agriculture, in former times, than it is at present? Was it less liable to droughts and consequent famines? Was it better provided with canals for irrigation, or with roads for conveying over its mountains the surplus of one province to feed the starving inhabitants of another? Was its code of rural and municipal laws less pernicious to agriculture, than it became afterwards? Was it less liable to epidemic diseases, which oppose at present such formidable obstacles to the increase of its population? On the contrary, between 1483 and 1506, there were no less than eleven years marked by the prevalence of epidemic maladies, called plagues, in some part or other of Spain; and the number of chapels and processions, founded in those times to St Roque and St Sebastian, show at once how common pestilential

pestilential discases must have been, and how inadequate were the means taken against them.

The institution of the holy brotherhood, for the security of travellers in desert and uncultivated places, revived by Ferdinand and Isabella, is far from being any proof of a dense and great population in the reign of these princes. The laws and privileges of the Mesta, confirmed and extended by Charles V, show, that a great part of Spain was then, as it is at present, in a state of pasturage. The innumerable laws for securing and regulating property in bees, which are to be found in all the Spanish codes, from the time of the Visigoths to Philip II., afford another proof of the quantity of wild and uncultivated land in Spain. And, while the exports of that kingdom, in the 15th and 16th centuries, show the preference given to pasturage over agriculture by its inhabitants, their exportation of wheat and rice proves, that the quantity of corn which they raised, was more than sufficient to supply their wants. If we extend our inquiries to a more remote antiquity, we find that, in the time of Alonso XI., all the provinces of Castille were full of wild boars and bears; and the kingdom, as then described to us, resembles more a wild and savage country, than a civilized and cultivated land.

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But let us look into the agricultural and economical writers of Spain, in the times of Charles V. and Ferdinand the Catholic. Alonso de Herrera was employed by Cardinal Ximenes to compile a book on husbandry for the use of his countrymen. But, does the curious and useful work which he composed, warsant us in concluding, that the agriculture of Spain was at that time conducted with intelligence, or pursued with industry? On the contrary, he begins his book, by lamenting the frequency of scarcities in Castille, which he imputes to the laziness of the people, and to their total neglect of agriculture. Laguna, physician to Charles V., in a botanical work, entituled, Dioscorides illustrated, written about 1555, observes, that gooseberries were very common in France, Italy and Flanders, but that he had never seen any in Castille, where indeed the people are very indifferent about gratifications of the palate; or, to say the truth, where they are so much more indolent than in other countries, that they extract nothing from the earth but what it spontaneously affords them, and leave many parts of their country in a state of nature, which, if properly watered and cultivated, would be highly productive.' Arrieta, in his book called the Despertador, or awakener, published in 1578, boasts, as usual, of the ancient riches and fertility, and laments the present poverty and sterility

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He reigned from 1312 to 1350.

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of his country. And, lastly, the pragmatica of Philip II., issued in 1594, states, in its preamble, that the yeomanry and small farmers of the kingdom were reduced, in general, to beggary and want; and that many even of the large farms had been abandoned by their owners, and left uncultivated. But are these complaints, resounding from so many quarters, compatible with that flourishing state of agriculture which could maintain eighteen millions of souls, in a country where hardly ten millions can find subsistence at present?

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But, independent of this presumptive evidence, we have positive proof, that many of the provinces of Spain were less populous in the 16th century, than they are at present. We have three enumerations of the inhabitants of Catalonia and Roussillon, in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. In 1368, they amounted to 365,000; in 1495, to 473,000; and in 1553, to 340,000. But, in 1797, the inhabitants of Catalonia alone, amounted to 858,818; while the population of Rousillon is estimated, by the French government, at 106,171 souls, making an increase of population, in the two provinces, of 624,989, since 1553. Valencia, in 1510, contained 54,555 families. In 1797, it contained 165,012 families. Allowing five persons to a family, its populațion, at the former period, was 272,775; at the latter period, 825,059, making a difference, in favour of the second, of 552,284. Arragon, in the time of the Catholic kings, contained only 440,000 inhabitants; it contains 657,376 at present; so that its increase has been 217,376. The whole population, therefore, of the three provinces of the crown of Arragon, in the 16th century, amounted to 1,052,775. The same provinces contain, at present, 2,447,424; and have, consequently, more than doubled their population. It is unfortunate for the argument, which attributes the ruin and supposed depopulation of Spain to the emigration of its inhabitants to America, that the Arragonian provinces have made their most rapid progress in wealth and population since the colonial trade was opened to them. The same is true of Biscay and Gallicia. Ustariz long ago remarked, in opposition to vulgar prejudice, that these two provinces, though they sent the greatest number of emigrants to America, were the best peopled provinces of Castille.

With regard to Castille, our accounts of its antient population are too inperfect to enable us to draw a similar comparison between its present and its former state. The ruinous appearance of many towns in Leon and the two Castilles, is an incontestable proof of their decline; and we are disposed to believe, that, in these provinces, there has been a positive diminution of popula tion, though to a much less extent than is commonly imagined.

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If we were to admit a similar decline in any other part of Spain, it would be in the kingdom of Granada, where, if we compare the present state of the Alpujarras, and the appearance of the valley of Granada, with the descriptions of Naviger and the history of the wars of Granada by Mendoza and others, we cannot but suppose, that, notwithstanding the increase of Malaga and other towns upon the coast, there has been a diminution, on the whole, in the population of the country. As to Estremadura and Andalucia, we know that the same towns exist there at present, which existed in the time of Ferdinand the Catholic; and if in many of them we perceive little appearance of business or activi ty, as little do we see in them, in general, any marks of decay. Seville has, indeed, declined in its commercial greatness, and possibly in its population; but Cadiz, Xeres, Isla de Leon, Puerto de Santa Maria and Puerto Real, have risen upon its fall. In the northern provinces, there can be no doubt, that there has been a considerable increase of population.

If the statistical returns made to Philip II. in answer to the queries which had been circulated by his order in the provinces of Castille, were carefully examined, a satisfactory account might be extracted from them, of the ancient population of these provinces. But though a copy of these voluminous returns has been made from the original, which is deposited in the Escurial, and has been for more than thirty years in the possession of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, no extract from it, nor summary of its contents, has yet been published. We observe, however, in MacPherson's Annals of Commerce, * an anonymous English treatise referred to, which was published in 1689, under the title of the Happy future State of England.' The anonymous author of this treatise asserts, that Mr Pepys (Secretary of the Admiralty) showed him a paper, stating, that the whole number of men in the realm of Spain, taken by a secret survey, some time, as is supposed, before the year 1588, was but 1,125,390, exclusive of the regular and the secular clergy. But it was in 1575 that Philip II. circulated his interrogatorio or queries about the population and state of Castille; and the returns to his queries, some of which we have seen, are dated in 1577 and 1578. If this coincidence of time be considered as any evidence that the numbers in Mr Pepys's paper were taken from a private abstract of these returns, the accuracy of the statement may be relied upon, for the returns were made with the greatest care and diligence. We must, however, on that supposition, substitute, in Mr Pepys's statement, provinces of Castille,' instead of realm of

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MacPherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. 2. p. 187.

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of Spain;' for the interrogatorio was circulated in Castille only. But if the number of men capable of bearing arms, exclusive of ecclesiastics, amounted to 1,125,390, the whole population of Castille, excluding the same description of persons, may be calculated at 4,501,560 souls. Adding 100,000 for ecclesiastics, the whole population will have been 4,601,560. But the population of Castille, at present, exclusive of Navarre, Biscay, Arragon, and the Canary Islands, amounts to 7,328,700 souls; and, consequently, there has been an increase of more than one half in the population of the provinces of Castille since the time of Philip II. If we add to this an increase of more than in the three provinces of Arragon, and suppose that in Navarre, Biscay, the Balearic and Canary Islands, the population has only dou bled, we shall have, for the total population of Spain, exclusive of America, under Philip II., 6,071,831; under Charles IV. 10,504,985.

England, when threatened with invasion by the Spaish Armada, is supposed to have contained 4,688,000 souls; † and it is remarkable enough, that the proportion of her population to that of Spain at the present day, is not very different from what it was then. It is true, that the Spanish monarchy comprehended at that time, along with Spain and her colonies, not only her ancient possessions in Flanders and Italy, but her recent acquisitions of Portu gal and the Portuguese conquests in Africa and India. It is also true, that England, since the days of Elizabeth, has increased her means of defence by the addition of at least 400,000 men able to bear arms in this part of the kingdom. She has also added about five millions to her population by her union with Ireland; and would to heaven we could say, that she had by that measure added in the same proportion to her strength and security; and that a blind and bigotted attachment to ancient prejudices, and a callous and disgusting indifference to the feelings and interests of so large a portion of her subjects, had not converted that which ought to have been her pride and strength, into her chief source of weakness and apprehension.

Our review of the first of these essays has extended to so unusual a length, that we must confine ourselves to a mere list

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The number of ecclefiaftical perfons in Spain, according to the returns made to government in 1768, 1787, and 1797, were 208,899, 191,101, and 182,447.

Andrews's Continuation of Henry's Hiftory of England, vol. 2.

P. 154.

The population of England and Wales, according to the govern ment returns (1801) amounts to 9,343,578.

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