An ably conducted French periodical, which acquired considerable weight under Louis Philippe, from the circumstance that its closing article expressed, every fifteen days, the views and opinions of the government, and which, since it ceased to be official, has shown a strong Orleanist leaning, put forth in a recent number a glowing statement of the immense advantages to be derived by Spain from the newly promulgated tariff bill.[12] Prepared by a previous article in the same review, which had taken for its base, and accepted as incontrovertible, a tissue of scurrilous and mendacious statements strung together by a Salamanquino doctor, and notoriously instigated by a Spanish minister and ambassador, with reference to the suspension of relations between England and Spain, we were no way surprised to find, in the discussion of the internal situation of the latter country, implicit reliance placed on the figures and assumptions of Spanish financiers, and a most _naïve_ conviction that their showy theories and projects would be honestly and effectually put in practice. Under the ingenious one-sidedness and apparent good faith of the writer, it was not difficult to discern an inspiration derived from Claremont or the Hotel Sotomayor. The object of the article was to prove that Spain, relieved from the incubus of English influence, and blessed with an enlightened and honest government, is rapidly emerging from her political, social, and financial difficulties; nay, that this astounding progress is half accomplished, and that the despised land has already risen many cubits in the European scale. "We ask," says the writer, after summing up at great length the benefits conferred on Spain by the Narvaez cabinet--benefits which, for the most part, have got no further than their project upon paper--"We ask, is not Spain sufficiently revenged for thirty years of disdain? Would not this Job of the nations have a right, in its turn, to drop insult upon the bloody dunghill whereon display themselves these haughty civilisations of yesterday's date?" Having given this brief specimen of style, we will now confine ourselves to figures, for most of which the writer in the _Revue_ appears to be indebted to Mr Mon. The result of his very plausible calculations is an immediate annual benefit of thirty-four million francs to the consumers of foreign manufactures, ninety-two millions to the country at large, in the shape of increased production, and a clear gain of sixty-three millions to the public treasury. We heartily desire, for the sake both of Spain and of her creditors, that this glorious prospect may be realised. If this is to be the result of what the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ admits to be but a timid step from the prohibitive to the protective system, what prosperity may not be prophesied to Spain from further progress in the same path? Nor are these a tithe of the benefits foretold, and which we refuse ourselves