Among her politicians in past times there were never wanting those who considered that the loss of Cuba would be a distinct gain to the mother country, and perhaps it may be safely said that since the colony had not only been for so many years the forcing-house of bureaucratic corruption, but had also drained the resources of Spain both of money and lives to the extreme limit of her possibility, she is more likely now to regain her old position among European nations, when left at peace to develop her enormous resources and set her house in order without the distraction of war, either at home or abroad.  When one remembers that this happy condition has never obtained in the country since the death of Ferdinand VII. until the close of the Spanish-American War, and that the country is only now recovering from the disorganisation caused by the return of her troops and refugees from Cuba and Manila, it is not surprising to find that the activity manifested in her trade, her manufactures, and her industries is such as to give the greatest hopes for her future to her own people and to those who watch her from afar with friendly eyes.

Whichever we may regard as cause or effect, the progress of the country has been very largely identified with the extension of her railway system.  It must have been a great step towards liberal education when the country which, priding herself on her geographical position and her rich internal resources, had hitherto wrapped herself in her national capa, and considered that she was amply sufficient to herself, condescended to throw open her mountain barriers to immigrants.  It was not until 1848 that the first Spanish railway was opened, and it was but seventeen miles in length; but in the next ten years five hundred miles had been constructed, and between 1858 and 1868 no fewer than two thousand eight hundred and five miles, the Pyrenees had been pierced, and direct communication with the rest of Europe accomplished.

During the troublous years following the Revolution and the melancholy struggles of the second Carlist war, very little progress was made.  Foreign capital, which had hitherto been invested in Spanish railways, was naturally frightened away, and the Northern Railway itself, the great artery to France, was constantly being torn up and damaged, and the lives of the passengers endangered, by the armed mobs which infested the country, and were supposed by some people to represent the cause of legitimacy, and which had, in fact, the sanction of the Church and of the Pope.  It was not, in the majority of cases, that the people sympathised with Don Carlos, but it was easier and more amusing for the lazy and the ne’er-do-weels to receive pay and rations for carrying a gun, and taking pot-shots at any object that presented itself, human or other, than to work in the fields, the mines, or on the railways.  Hence public enterprise was paralysed; again and again the workmen, with no desire of their own, were driven off by superior bands of these wandering shooters, who scarcely deserved even the name of guerillas, and public works were left deserted and decaying, while the commerce and industry of the province were wrecked, and apparently destroyed irrevocably.