Doubtless the thought may have occurred to readers that some interpretation is necessary to explain how such events as these (extending over a series of years) are still possible in Spain--in a country fully equipped not only with elaborate legal codes bristling with stringent penalties both for crime and its abettors, but also with magistrates, judges, telegraphs, and an ample armed force, competent, loyal, and keen to enforce those laws. Without assistants and accomplices (call their aiders and abettors what you will) the Pernales and Vivillos of to-day could not survive for a week. The explanation lies in the existence of that inexplicable and apparently ineradicable power called Caciquismo--fortunately, we believe, on the decline, but still a force sufficient to paralyse the arm of the law and arrest the exercise of justice. Ranging from the lowest rungs of society, Caciquismo penetrates to the main-springs of political power. A secret understanding with combined action amongst the affiliated, it secures protection even to criminals with their hidden accomplices, provided that each and all yield blind obedience to their ruling Cacique, social and political. The Cacique stands above law; he is a law unto himself; he does or leaves undone, pays or leaves unpaid as may suit his convenience--conscience he has none. At his own sweet will he will charge personal expenses--say his gamekeepers' wages or the cost of a private roadway--to the neighbouring municipality. None dare object. Caciquismo is no fault of the Spanish people; it is the disgrace of the Caciques, who, as men of education, should be ashamed of mean and underhand practices that recall, on a petty scale, those of the Tyrants of Syracuse. Should any of these sleek-faces read our book, they may be gratified to learn that no other civilised country produces parasites such as they. Not a foreign student of the problems of social life in Spain with its conditions but has been brought to a full stop in the effort to diagnose or describe the secret sinister influence of Caciquismo. Our Spanish friends--detesting and despising the thing equally with ourselves--tell us that no foreigner has yet realised either its nature or its scope. Certainly we make no such pretension, nor attempt to describe the thing itself--a thing scarce intelligible to Saxon lines of thought, a baneful influence devised to retard the advance of modern ideas of freedom and justice, to benumb all moral yearnings for truth and honesty in public affairs and civil government. Caciquismo may roughly be defined as the negation and antithesis of patriotism; it sets the personal influence of one before the interest of all, sacrificing whole districts to the caprice of some soul-warped tyrant with no eyes to see. * * * * *