the Cadiz and Barcelona cliques, have steadily, and amidst the loud applause of their hungry dependents, pursued the usual selfish objects of democratic ambition. All useful establishments, all which relieved or blessed the poor, were rooted out; new offices and jurisdictions were created in every direction; numberless commissions were issued; and the well-paid Liberals began to roll in their carriages, and keep their boxes at the opera. The property of the Church, which in Spain is literally the endowment at once of education and the poor, was the first to be rooted out. Its character and usefulness is thus described by our author :

"The convents in Spain are not like those which we had among us in Catholic times; and their suppression will necessarily excite indignation, besides giving rise to great abuses. They mostly partook of the character of the hospice, particularly in the northern provinces. To the peasants they often served as banking establishments, and greatly favoured agricultural improvements. The friars acted as schoolmasters, advocates, physicians, and apothecaries. Besides feeding and clothing the poor, and visiting the sick, they afforded spiritual consolation. They were considerate landlords and indulgent masters. They were peace-makers in domestic broils; and if a harvest failed, they supplied the seed that was to be confided to the earth the next year. They also provided periodical amusements and festivities, which the peasant will see abandoned with regret. Most of the convents had fundaciones, or endowments, for professors who taught rhetoric, philosophy, &c., besides keeping schools open for the poor. They also supplied curates when wanted, and their preachers are considered the best in Spain.

"Without entering into the question of the legality of these suppressions, or pointing out the folly of a government proceeding to such extremes that is not sure of its own existence for half a year, it may be stated, that all the expedients resorted to in our Henry VIII.'s time, to bring the monastic orders into disrepute, have been practised by the Spanish Liberals, and have failed. On the 19th January 1836, the monks in Madrid were driven out of their convents at two o'clock in the morning, without the slightest regard to age or infirmity. After being grossly insulted and reviled, several were waylaid in the streets by the rayo, or thunderbolt party, and cudgelled in the most unmerciful manner. The measure of ejectment was simultaneously carried into execution wherever the Government could enforce its commands; the great object in view being to seize on money, plate, and valuables.

"The Liberals have appointed commissions to receive the confiscated property, and the same abuses occur as in 1822. One instance will suffice in the way of illustration. The convent of St John of God, at Cadiz, well known to many of our countrymen, formerly fed and clothed a large number of poor; and its members, being mostly medical men, attended the sick and administered medicine gratis. The relief afforded by this institution was incalculable; and yet its funds, economically administered, and aided only by voluntary donations, were sufficient to satisfy every claim. The Liberals took its administration upon themselves; and the persons intrusted with it soon grew rich, and had their boxes at the theatre. They had profits on the contracts for provisions, medicine, and other supplies. The amount of relief afforded was also diminished; and yet, at the end of the first year, the ordinary funds were exhausted, and the new administrators obliged to make public appeals to the humane."

The destitution thus inflicted on the clergy, and misery on the poor, has been unbounded.

"The suppression lately ordained by the Christino government may be called a general one, and the number of establishments to which it had extended, at the end of last September, was estimated at 1937, leaving 23,699 ejected inmates, whose annual maintenance, if paid at the promised rate, would not be less than £400,000.”

The creation of new jurisdictions, and the extirpation of all the ancient landmarks, was as favourite an object with the Spanish as it had been with the French revolutionists.

"The plan for the territorial divisions was also put forward. It may be here proper to observe, that formerly Spain was divided into fourteen sections, unequal in extent and population. It was now proposed to divide the territory, including the adjacent islands, into forty-nine provinces, or districts, taking the names of their respective capitals, except Navarre, Biscay, Guipuscoa, and Alava, which were to preserve their ancient denominations. The principality of Asturias was to become the province of Oviedo. Andalusia was to be parcelled out into seven provinces; Aragon into three; New Castile into five; Old Castile into eight; Catalonia into four; Estremadura into two; Galicia into four; Leon into three; Murcia into two; and Valencia into three. To each it was wished to give, as near as possible, a population of 250,000 persons; and the census taken in 1833, amounting to 12,280,000 souls, was taken for a standard. A new magistrate, called sub-delegate, was to be appointed to each province, and act under the immediate orders of the minister Del Fomento."

And it is to support SUCH A CAUSE that the Quadruple Alliance was formed, and Lord John Hay, and the gallant marines of England, sent out, and £500,000 worth of arms and ammunition furnished to the revolutionary Government! Lord Palmerston says all this was done, because it is for the interest of England to promote the establishment of Liberal institutions in all the adjoining states. Is it, then,

for the "interest of England" to establish universal suffrage, a single chamber, and a powerless throne, in the adjoining countries, in order that the reflection of their lustre there may tend to their successful introduction into this realm ? Is it for the interest, any more than the honour, of England, to ally itself with a set of desperadoes, assassins, and murderers, and to promote, by all the means in its power, the extinction of liberty in those seats of virtuous institutionsthe Basque provinces? What has been the return which the Liberals of Lisbon have made for the aid which placed their puppet on the throne, and gave them the command of the whole kingdom? To issue a decree raising threefold the duties on every species of British manufacture. A similar result may with certainty be anticipated, after all

the blood and treasure we have wasted, and more than all the character we have lost, from Evans' co-operation, if he shall succeed in beating down the Carlist cause; because the urban democracy, which will then be established in uncontrolled power, will be necessarily actuated by the commercial passions and jealousy of that class in society.

One word more in regard to the Durango decree, on which such vehement efforts have been made to rouse the sympathy and excite the indignation of the British people. None can lament that decree more than we do: none can more earnestly desire its repeal; and if our humble efforts can be of any avail, we implore the counsellors of Don Carlos, for the sake of humanity, to stop its execution-to obtain its repeal. But when it is said that it is such a stain upon the cause of the Spanish Conservatives, as renders their cause unworthy of the support of any good man, we are prompted to ask what cause did the English mercenaries go out to support? Was it the cause of civilised, humane, legalised warfare? No! it was that of murder, robbery, and plunder; of massacred babes and weltering valleys; of conflagration, rapine, and extermination. They voluntarily joined their standards to those of a power which had begun the infamous system of giving no quarter, and, despite all the efforts of the Duke of Wellington's mission, had resumed it, and was prosecuting it with relentless rigour. They marched along with those exterminating bands into valleys, where they had burned every house, and slaughtered every second inhabitant, and clothed in weeds every mother and sister that survived. They marched along with these execrable bands, without any condition, without either proclaiming for themselves, or exacting from their allies, any other and more humane system of warfare. By their presence, however inefficient they may have been on the Biscayan shore, they have prolonged, for two years beyond the period when it would otherwise have terminated, the heartrending civil war of Spain. If the 20,000 English and French auxiliaries, who retained an equal force of Carlists inactive in their front, had been removed, can there be a doubt Don Carlos would have been on the throne, and peace established in Spain two years ago? How many thousands of Spanish old men and women have been slaughtered,

VOL. II.

2 D

while Evans held the hands of their avenging heroes? We have thus voluntarily ranged ourselves beside a frightful exterminating power: can we be surprised if we are met by the severities which that power's atrocities have rendered unavoidable? We have joined hands with the murderer : though we may not have ourselves lifted the dagger, we have held the victim while our confederates plunged it in his heart; and can we be surprised if we are deemed fit objects of the terrible law of retribution?

Do we then counsel aid to Don Carlos, or any assistance to the cause he supports? Far from it: we would not that one Englishman should be exposed to the contagion of the hideous atrocities which the revolutionists have committed, and to which the Carlists in self-defence have been driven, in every part of Spain. What we counsel is--what we have never ceased to urge ever since this hideous strife began in the Peninsula-- Withdraw altogether from it: bring home the marines, the auxiliaries, the steamboats: send no more arms or ammunition from the Tower: declare to the Christinos that, till they return to the usages of civilised war, we will not send them another gun under the Quadruple Treaty. It is a woful reflection, that our vast influence with the revolutionary Government, after the Quadruple Alliance, was perfectly adequate, if properly exerted, to have entirely stopped this exterminating warfare. But what must be our reflection, when we recollect that we have actually supported it! And if hereafter a band of Cossacks or Pandours shall land on the coast of Kent, to perpetuate a bloody strife in the realms of England, to support the savage excesses of an Irish civil war, and spread mourning and woe through every cottage in England, it is no more than we have done. to the Biscay mountaineers, and no more than what, under a just retribution, we may expect to endure from some equally unjust and uncalled-for aggression.

THE COPYRIGHT QUESTION

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JANUARY 1842]*

WHOEVER has contemplated of late years the state of British literature, and compared it with the works of other countries who have preceded England in the career of arts or of arms, must have become sensible that some very powerful cause has, for a long period, been at work in producing the present ephemeral character by which it is in general distinguished. It is a matter of common complaint, that everything is now sacrificed to the desires or the gratification of the moment; that philosophy, descending from its high station as the instructor of men, has degenerated into the mere handmaid of art; that literature is devoted rather to afford amusement for a passing hour, than to furnish improvement to a long life; and that poetry itself has become rather the reflection of the fleeting fervour of the public mind, than the well from which noble and elevated sentiments are to be derived. We have only to take up the columns of a newspaper, to see how varied and endless are the efforts made to amuse the public, and how few the attempts to instruct or improve them; and if we examine the books which lie upon every drawing-room table, or the catalogues which show the purchases that have been made by any of the numerous book clubs or circulating libraries which have sprung up in the country, we shall feel no surprise at the fleeting nature of the literature which abounds, from the evidence there afforded of the transitory character of the public wishes which require to be gratified.

It is not to be supposed, however, from this circumstance, which is so well known as to have attracted universal observation, that the taste for standard or more solid literature * Written when Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill was before Parliament.