The sums thus iniquitously received (and willingly paid by the smugglers) amounts to a charge of 15 per cent. on the value of the prohibited articles; a duty to that amount, or even something beyond, would therefore readily be paid, to enable the purchaser to take his goods openly into the market. The trade would thus fall into more respectable hands; competition would increase; and the sellers would be satisfied with smaller profits. This would naturally lead to an increased demand, and the revenue would be proportionably benefited.
The obsolete notions that wed the Spaniards to their present faulty system are, first, that, by opening the trade to foreign powers, their own country would be drained of its specie, in which they seem to think the riches of a nation consist; and secondly, that the national manufactures would be ruined, if not protected by the imposition of high duties on those of other countries.
The fallacy of these ideas is evident; for it would not be possible to devise any plan by which money could be kept in a country, when the articles that country stands in need of are to be bought cheaper elsewhere; and it is futile to suppose—as, however, is fondly imagined—that Spain’s doubloons go only to her colonies, to be brought back in taxation, or for the purchase of the produce of the mother country. As well might we imagine that Zante alone could furnish England with her Christmas consumption of Currants, as that Cuba and the Philippine Islands (all the Colonies worth enumerating that Spain now possesses) could supply her with tobacco, cocoa, and cinnamon. And, as the above-mentioned articles are as much necessaries of life in Spain, as tea and sugar—not to say the aforesaid currants—are in England, the deficiency, coute qui coute, must be made good somewhere; and consequently Spanish money will have to be expended in procuring what is wanting.
A much greater evil than this, however, is occasioned by the enormously high duty placed by the Mother Country on these very articles, the produce of her dependencies; so that even her own colonial produce is smuggled to her through the hands of foreigners!
With respect to the favour shown and encouragement given to her own manufactures, by the prohibitory duties imposed on those of other nations, it must be evident to any one at all acquainted with the state of the inland communications of Spain, that the country is not in a sufficiently advanced state of civilization to warrant its engaging in such undertakings with any prospect of success. The Factories that are already in existence cannot supply clothing for one fourth part of the population of the country; to which circumstance alone are they indebted for being able to continue at work; for if the number were increased, all would inevitably fail. The same cause, therefore, here also exists, to encourage smuggling, as in the case of the consumable articles, tobacco, spices, &c.—viz. the necessity of finding a supply to meet the demand.
It is quite surprising that, for such a length of time, and under so many different administrations, Spain should have continued thus blind to her own interest. But, without going the length I have suggested, much good might be effected, by merely giving up the farming out the taxes and various monopolies, and by putting a stop to sundry other abuses, such as the sale of places, by which the Crown revenues are principally raised.
If the present faulty system were abandoned,—by which a few individuals only are enriched to the prejudice of the rest of the community,—numerous speculators would be found ready to embark their capitals in mining operations, in the construction of railroads, canals, &c. which would be productive of incalculable benefit to the country; for, by such means, the produce of the fertile plains in the interior of Spain would be able to come with advantage into the foreign market; whilst the varied productions of this fruitful country, by being distributed throughout its provinces with a more equal hand, would be within the reach, and add to the comforts of all classes of its inhabitants.
At the present day, such is the want of these means of communication, that it frequently happens an article which is plentifully produced in one province is absolutely difficult to procure in another. One province, for instance, has wine, but wants bread; another has corn, but not any wood; a third abounds in pasture, but has no market for its cheese, butter, &c., thus rendering the cattle it possesses of comparatively little value.
From the same cause, large tracts of land lie waste in many parts of Spain, because the crops they would yield, if cultivated, would not pay the cost of transport, even to the adjoining province; and a prodigious quantity of wine is annually destroyed, (a cruel fate from which even the divine Val de Peñas is not exempt!) because the casks and pig-skins containing it are of more value, on the spot where the wine is grown, than is the wine itself. What remains unsold, therefore, at the end of the year, is frequently poured into the street, in order that the casks may be available for the new wine.—Such would also be the fate of all the light wines grown on the banks of the Guadalete, but that the vicinity of Port St. Mary and Cadiz makes it worth the grower’s while to prepare them with brandy and stronger bodied wines, to bear the rolling over the Bay of Biscay.
In an article of produce so readily transported as barley, I have known the price of a fanega[79] vary no less than four reales vellon[80] on the opposite sides of the same chain of mountains; and I have seen Barbary wheat selling at Gibraltar, for one third less than corn of Spanish growth could be purchased at San Roque. This certainly would not be the case, if the riches of Spain could be distributed more easily over the whole face of the country; and since the demand for exportation would thereby be greatly increased, more industrious habits would be engendered, and an important step would thus be made towards civilization.