for values.  Great Britain has a market among twenty-seven millions of an active and intelligent people, abounding in wealth and advanced in the tastes of luxurious living, to offer against one presenting little more than half the range of possible customers.  She has more; she has the markets of the millions of her West Indies and Americas—­of the tens of millions of British India, amongst whom a desire for the various fruits and delicious wines of Spain might gradually become diffused for a thousand of varieties of wines which, through the pressure of restrictive duties, are little if at all known to European consumption beyond the boundaries of Spain herself.  With such vast fields of commercial intercourse open on the one side and the other, with the bands of mutual material interests combining so happily to bind two nations together which can have no political causes of distrust and estrangement, it is really marvellous that the direct relations should be of so small account, and so hampered by jealous adherence to the strict letter of an absurd legislation, as in consequence to be diverted from their natural course into other and objectionable channels—­as the waters of the river artificially dammed up will overflow its banks, and, regaining their level, speed on by other pathways to the ocean.  We shall briefly exemplify the force of these truths by the citation of official figures representing the actual state of the trade between Spain and the United Kingdom antecedent to and concluding with the year 1840, which is the last year for which in detail the returns have yet issued from the Board of Trade.  That term, however, would otherwise be preferentially selected, because affording facilities for comparison with similar but partial returns only of foreign commerce made up in Spain to the same period, little known in this country, and with the French customhouse returns of the trade of France with Spain.  It must be premised that the tables of the Board of Trade in respect of import trade, as well as of foreign and colonial re-exports, state quantities only, but not values; nor do they present any criteria by which values approximately might be determined.  Where, therefore, such values are attempted to be arrived at, it will be understood that the calculations are our own, and pretend no more—­for no more could be achieved—­than a rough estimate of probable approximation.

Total declared value of British and Irish produce and manufactures exported to Spain and the Balearic Isles in—­

1840, amounted to L.404,252
1835,               405,065
1831,               597,848

From the first to the last year of the decennial term, the regular trade, therefore, had declined to the extent of above L.193,000, or at the rate of about 33 per cent.  But as for three of the intermediate years 1837, 1838, and 1839, the exports are returned at L.286,636, L.243,839, and L.262,231, exclusive of fluctuations downwards in previous years, it will be more satisfactory to take the averages for five years each, of the term.  Thus from—­