Armed men are in fact the weed of the soil of Spain, in peace or war; to have their hand against all mankind seems to be an instinct in every descendant of Ishmael, and particularly among this Quixotic branch, whose knight-errants, reformers on horseback, have not unfrequently been robbers in the guise of gentlemen. During the war against Buonaparte, the Peninsula swarmed with insurgents, many of whom were inspired, by a sense of loyalty, with indignation at their outraged religion, and with a deep-rooted national loathing of the _gabacho_, and good service did these Minas and Co. do to the cause of their lawful king; but others used patriotic professions as specious cloaks to cover their instinctive passion for a lawless and freebooting career, and before the liberation of the country was effected, had become formidable to all parties alike. The Duke of Wellington, with his characteristic sagacity, foresaw, at his victorious conclusion of the struggle, how difficult it would be to weed out “this strange fruit borne on a tree grafted by patriotism.” The transition from murdering a Frenchman, to plundering a stranger, appeared a simple process to these patriotic scions, whose numbers were swelled with all who were, or who considered themselves to be, ill used--with all who could not dig, and were ashamed to beg. The evil was diminished during the latter years of the reign of Ferdinand VII., when the old hands began to die off, and an advance in social improvement was unquestionably general, before which these lawless occupations gave way, as surely as wild animals of prey do before improved cultivation. These evils, that are abated by internal quiet and the continued exertions of the authorities, increase with troubled times, which, as the tempest calls forth the stormy petrel, rouse into dangerous action the worst portions of society, and create a sort of civil cachexia, as we now see in Ireland. [Sidenote: SMUGGLERS.]