Immense changes have taken place in recent times, and more particularly in the present century, with regard to the distribution of land in Spain. The large amount of property held by the Crown, the religious orders, the clergy, and various municipal bodies, and the restrictions imposed by the laws of the Mesta on the enclosure of land, rendered the number of private proprietors formerly very few. Even in 1800 their number was only 273,760. In 1764 it was estimated that the clergy possessed one-sixth of the real property, and one-third of the movable property of all Spain, and the property of the Church paid scarcely any taxes, or none at all. From the beginning of the sixteenth century protests were continually being made against abuses of Church property, but only towards the end of the eighteenth century were measures of reform seriously undertaken. Little, however, was really effected till the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812-13, when the feudal dues on land, of whatever nature, regal, ecclesiastical, or seignorial, were abolished. The religious orders were also suppressed. In 1820 a law was passed forbidding the Church to acquire any more real property. Tithes, of which the clergy possessed 60 per cent, and the laity 40, were diminished by half in 1821, and wholly suppressed in 1837. In 1836 the possessions of the clergy were declared to be national property, and the sale of them was begun. This, with various interruptions, according as a liberal or reactionary Government has been in power, has been continued to the present time. The Crown and municipal property had been sold at an earlier period, from 1813 to 1855. The Mesta was totally abolished in 1837 as to its privileged rights on property, and in 1851 became merely an agricultural association for the improvement of the breed of cattle. The serfs in Galicia were declared to have become proprietors of their land by prescription in 1763. The result of these successive measures, and of these immense sales of territorial property, has been to throw the land into the hands of a much greater number of small landed proprietors, who now number 3,426,083, so that, in spite of some large estates still existing, especially in Andalusia, the average quantity of land held in Spain by each proprietor would seem to be only about some 30 acres. Yet in Galicia alone does there seem to have been any suffering caused by a too great subdivision of land, and this perhaps was caused more by the perpetuation of habits acquired while the land was burdened with seignorial dues, when the occupier could neither quit his land nor sell it. In this district the people are still miserably poor, their food and houses are equally wretched, and nothing but the large emigration that has taken and is now taking place will restore the province to any real prosperity.