As all men in power use their official knowledge in taking advantage of the turn of the market, the _Bolsa_ divides with the court and army the moving influence of every _situacion_ or crisis of the moment: clever as are the ministers of Paris, they are mere tyros when compared to their colleagues of Madrid in the arts of working the telegraph, gazette, &c., and thereby feathering their own nests. The Stock Exchange is open from ten to three o’clock, where those who like Spanish funds may buy them as cheap as stinking mackerel; for when the 3 per cents, of perfidious Albion are at 98, surely Spanish fives at 22 are a tempting investment. The stocks are numerous, and suited to all tastes and pockets, whether those funded by Aguado, Ardouin, Toreno, Mendizabal, or Mon, “all honourable men,” and whose punctuality is _un-remitting_, for in some the principal is consolidated, in others the interest is deferred; the grand financial object in all having been to receive as much as possible, and pay back in an inverse ratio--their leading principle being to bag both principal and interest. As we have just said, in measuring out money and oil a little will stick to the cleanest fingers--the Madrid ministers and contractors made fortunes, and actually “did” the Hebrews of London, as their forefathers spoiled the Egyptians. But from Philip II. downwards, theologians have never been wanting in Spain to prove the religious, however painful, duty of bankruptcy, and particularly in contracts with usurious heretics. The stranger, when shown over the Madrid bank, had better evince no impertinent curiosity to see the “Dividend _pay_ office,” as it might give offence. Whatever be our dear reader’s pursuit in the Peninsula, let him-- “Neither a borrower nor lender be, For loan oft loseth both itself and friend.” Beware of Spanish stock, for in spite of official reports, _documentos_, and arithmetical mazes, which, intricate as an arabesque pattern, look well on paper without being intelligible; in spite of ingenious conversions, fundings of interest, coupons--some active, some passive, and other repudiatory terms and tenses, the present excepted--the thimblerig is always the same; and this is the question, since national credit depends on national good faith and surplus income, how can a country pay interest on debts, whose revenues have long been, and now are, miserably insufficient for the ordinary expenses of government? You cannot get blood from a stone; _ex nihilo nihil fit_. [Sidenote: PUBLIC DEBT.]