text:  And all this fine nation of warm and generous temperament of naturally noble and virtuous aspirations thus desperately to be dismantled of its once-proud attributes and demoralized in its character; its exhaustless riches of soil and climate to be wantonly wasted--per force of false legislation to be left uncultured--and for why? Shades of the illustrious Gabarrus and Jovellanos why? Why to enable some half dozen _fabricantes_ of Barcelona to keep less than half-a-dozen steam-engines at work which shall turn some few thousands of spindles spinning and twisting some few millions of pounds of yarn by which after nearly three quarters of a century that the cotton manufacture has been planted "swathed rocked and dandled" with legislative fondness into a rickety nursling some fifty millions of yards of cotton cloths are said to be painfully brought forth in the year; the value of which may probably be equal to the same or a larger quantity of French cottons introduced by contraband and consumed in the provinces of Catalonia and Arragon themselves--the first being sole seat of the cotton manufacture for all Spain