The continental system of mercantile exclusion was another spring of this complicated machinery. It threatened to lessen the already decayed commerce of the maritime towns; but the contraband trade, which has always been carried on in Spain to an incredible extent, was certain of destruction; and with that trade the fate of one hundred thousand excise and custom-house officers was involved. It required but a small share of penetration to perceive, that a system of armed revenue officers, organized after the French manner, and stimulated by a vigorous administration, would quickly put an end to the smuggling, which was, in truth, only a consequence of the monopolies and internal restrictions upon the trade of one province with another--vexations abolished by the constitution of Bayonne: hence all the activity and intelligence of the merchants engaged in foreign trade, and all the numbers and lawless violence of the smugglers, were enlisted in the cause of the country, and swelled the ranks of the insurgent patriots; and hence also the readiness of the Gibraltar merchants to advance the loan before spoken of. The state of civilisation in Spain was likewise exactly suited to an insurrection: if the people had been a little more enlightened, they would have joined the French; if very enlightened, the invasion could not have happened at all; but, in a country where the comforts of civilized society are less needed, and therefore less attended to than in any other part of Europe, where the warmth and dryness of the climate render it no sort of privation or even inconvenience to sleep for the greatest part of the year in the open air, and where the universal custom is to go armed, it was not difficult for any energetic man to assemble and keep together large masses of the credulous peasantry. No story could be too gross for their belief, if it agreed with their wishes. “Es verdad, los dicen,” “It is true, they say it,” is the invariable answer of a Spaniard if a doubt is expressed of the truth of an absurd report. Of temperate habits, possessing little furniture, and generally hoarding all the gold he can get, the Spanish peasant is less concerned for the loss of his house than the inhabitant of another country would be: the effort that he makes in relinquishing his abode must not be measured by the scale of an Englishman’s exertion in a like case; and once engaged in an adventure, the lightness of his spirits, and the brilliancy of his sky, make it a matter of indifference to the angry Spanish peasant whither he wanders. [Sidenote: Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon.]