Spain at this epoch had probably less than twelve millions of
inhabitants, although the statistics of those days cannot be relied upon
with accuracy. The whole revenue of the state was nominally sixteen or
seventeen millions of dollars, but the greater portion of that income was
pledged for many coming years to the merchants of Genoa. All the little
royal devices for increasing the budget by debasing the coin of the
realm, by issuing millions of copper tokens, by lowering the promised
rate of interest on Government loans, by formally repudiating both
interest and principal, had been tried, both in this and the preceding
reign, with the usual success. An inconvertible paper currency,
stimulating industry and improving morals by converting beneficent
commerce into baleful gambling--that fatal invention did not then exist.
Meantime, the legitimate trader and innocent citizen were harassed, and
the general public endangered, as much as the limited machinery of the
epoch permitted.

The available, unpledged revenue of the kingdom hardly amounted to five
millions of dollars a-year. The regular annual income of the church was
at least six millions. The whole personal property of the nation was
estimated in a very clumsy and unsatisfactory way, no doubt--at sixty
millions of dollars. Thus the income of the priesthood was ten per cent.
of the whole funded estate of the country, and at least a million a year
more than the income of the Government. Could a more biting epigram be
made upon the condition to which the nation had been reduced?

Labour was more degraded than ever. The industrious classes, if such
could be said to exist, were esteemed every day more and more infamous.
Merchants, shopkeepers, mechanics, were reptiles, as vilely, esteemed as
Jews, Moors, Protestants, or Pagans. Acquiring wealth by any kind of
production was dishonourable. A grandee who should permit himself to