text:  Secondly that under such a system Spain has continued the exceptional case of a non or scarcely progressing European state; that the maintenance and enhancement of fiscal rigours and manufacturing monopoly jealously fenced round with a legislative wall of prohibition and restriction has neither advanced the prosperity of the quarter of a million of people in Catalonia Valencia and Biscay in whose exclusive behalf the great and enduring interests of the remaining thirteen millions and upwards of the population have been postponed or sacrificed--nor contributed to strengthen the financial resources of the government as proved by the prostrate position and prospects of a bankrupt and beggared exchequer; that as the necessary and inevitable consequence the progress of agriculture the ascendant interest of all-powerful communities and vast territorially endowed states--of Spain the almost one only interest and element of vitality economical and political--has been impeded and continues to be discouraged; that the march of internal improvements is checked or stunted when not absolutely stayed; finally that public morals--the social health of a great people inheritors of glorious antecedents of an historic renown for those qualities of a high order the deep-seated sentiment of personal as of national honour and dignity the integrity fidelity and gallantry which more loftily spurn contaminating approximation with action springing out of base sordid and degrading motives and associations--have been sapped and corrupted by the debasing influences of that gigantic system of organized illicit trade which covers Spain with hordes of _contrabandistas_ more numerous and daring than the bands of _aduaneros_ and the armies of regulars whom they set at defiance and infests the coast of Spain with fleets of smuggling craft which all the _guardas costas_ with the ancient armada of Spain were it in existence would be powerless to annihilate