The whole subject of Spanish commerce is one of peculiar interest, and, through the more rigorous regulations recently adopted against smuggling, is at this moment exciting marked attention in France, which, it will be found with some surprise, is far the largest smuggler of prohibited commodities into Spain, although the smallest consumer of Spanish products in return.  It is in no trifling degree owing to the jealous and exclusive views which unhappily prevail with our nearest neighbour across the Channel, that the prohibitory tariff, scarcely more adverse to commercial intercourse than that of France after all, which robs the revenue of Spain, whilst it covers the country with hosts of smugglers, has not sooner been revised and reformed.  France is not willing to enter into a confederacy of interests with Spain herself, nor to permit other nations, on any fair equality of conditions, and with the abandonment of those unjust pretensions to special privileges in her own behalf, which, still tenaciously clinging to Bourbonic traditions of by-gone times, would affect to annihilate the Pyrenees, and regard Spain as a dependent possession, reserved for the exclusive profit and the commercial and political aggrandisement of France.  That these exaggerated pretensions are still entertained as an article of national faith, from the sovereign on his throne to the meanest of his subjects, we have before us, at this moment of writing, conclusive evidence in the report of M. Chegaray, read in the Chamber of Deputies on the 11th of April last, (vide Moniteur of the 12th,) drawn up by a commission, to whom was referred the consideration of the actual commercial relations of France with Spain—­provoked by various petitions of the merchants of Bayonne, and other places, complaining of the prejudice resulting to their commerce and shipping from certain alterations in the Spanish customs’ laws, decreed by the Regent in 1841.  We may have occasion hereafter to make further reference to this report.

The population of Spain may be rated in round numbers at thirteen millions and a half, whilst that of the United Kingdom may be taken at about double the number.  With a wise policy, therefore, the interchange should be of an active and most extensive nature betwixt two countries, reckoning together more than forty millions of inhabitants, one of which, with a superficial breadth of territory out of all proportion with a comparatively thinly-scattered community, abounding with raw products and natural riches of almost spontaneous growth; whilst the other, as densely peopled, on the contrary, in comparison with its territorial limits, is stored with all the elements, and surpasses in all the arts and productions of manufacturing industry.  Unlike France, Great Britain does not rival Spain in wines, oils, fruits, and other indigenous products of southern skies, and therefore is the more free to act upon the equitable principle of fair exchange in values