The present revenue may be taken at about 12,000,000_l._ or 13,000,000_l._ sterling; but money is compared by Spaniards to oil; a little will stick to the fingers of those who measure it out; and such is the robbing and jobbing, the official mystification and peculation, that it is difficult to get at _facts_ whenever cash is in question. The revenue, moreover, is badly collected, and at a ruinous per centage, and at no time during this last century has been sufficient for the national expenses. Recourse has been had to the desperate experiments of usurious loans and wholesale confiscations. At one time church pillage and appropriation was almost the only item in the governmental budget. The recipients were ready to “prove from Vatel exceedingly well” that the first duty of a rich clergy was to relieve the necessitous, and the more when the State was a pauper: croziers are no match for bayonets. This system necessarily cannot last. Since the reign of Philip II. every act of dishonesty has been perpetrated. Public securities have been “repudiated,” interest unpaid, and principal spunged out. No country in the Old World, or even New drab-coated World, stands lower in financial discredit. Let all be aware how they embark in Spanish speculations: however promising in the prospectus, they will, sooner or later, turn out to be deceptions; and whether they assume the form of loans, lands, or rails, none are _real_ securities: they are mere castles in the air, _châteaux en Espagne_: “The earth has bubbles as the water has, and these are of them.” For the benefit and information of those who have purchased Iberian stock, it may be stated that an Exchange, or _Bolsa de Comercio_, was established at Madrid in 1831. It may be called the _coldest_ spot in the hot capital, and the _idlest_, since the usual “city article” is short and sweet, “_sin operaciones_,” or nothing has been bought or sold. It might be likened to a tomb, with “Here _lies_ Spanish credit” for its epitaph. If there be a thing which “_La perfide Albion_,” “a nation of shopkeepers,” dislikes, worse even than a French assignat, it is a bankrupt. One circumstance is clear, that Castilian _pundonor_, or point of honour, will rather settle its debts with cold iron and warm abuse than with gold and thanks. The Exchange at Madrid was first held at _St. Martin’s_, a saint who divided his cloak with a supplicant. As comparisons are odious, and bad examples catching, it has been recently removed to the _Calle del Desengaño_, the street of “finding out fallacious hopes,” a locality which the bitten will not deem ill-chosen. [Sidenote: SPANISH “STOCK."]