Two-thirds of this sum, if employed in the construction of a system of railroads, would ultimately prove a source of greater wealth to the Spanish people than that opened to their vision by Cortez. Their prosperity would date from the ratification of the treaty of cession. France has already constructed continuous lines of railways from Havre, Marseilles, Valenciennes, and Strasburg, via Paris, to the Spanish frontier, and anxiously awaits the day when Spain shall find herself in a condition to extend these roads through her northern provinces to Madrid, Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, and the frontiers of Portugal. This object once accomplished, Spain would become a center of attraction for the traveling world, and secure a permanent and profitable market for her various productions. Her fields, under the stimulus given to industry by remunerating prices, would teem with cereal grain, and her vineyards would bring forth a vastly increased quantity of choice wines. Spain would speedily become what a bountiful Providence intended she should be, one of the first nations of continental Europe--rich, powerful and contented. Whilst two-thirds of the price of the island would be ample for the completion of her most important public improvements, she might with the remaining forty millions satisfy the demands now pressing so heavily upon her credit, and create a sinking fund which would gradually relieve her from the overwhelming debt now paralyzing her energies. Such is her present wretched financial condition, that her best bonds are sold upon her own bourse at about one-third of their par value; whilst another class, on which she pays no interest, have but a nominal value, and are quoted at about one-sixth of the amount for which they were issued. Besides, these latter are held principally by British creditors, who may, from day to day, obtain the effective interposition of their own government for the purpose of coercing payment. Intimations to that effect have already been thrown out from high quarters, and unless some new sources of revenue shall enable Spain to provide for such exigencies, it is not improbable that they may be realized. Should Spain reject the present golden opportunity for developing her resources and removing her financial embarrassments, it may never again return. Cuba, in her palmiest days, never yielded her exchequer, after deducting the expense of its government, a clear annual income of more than a million and a half of dollars. These expenses have increased to such a degree as to leave a deficit, chargeable on the treasury of Spain, to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars. In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, the island is an encumbrance instead of a source of profit to the mother country.