The Historians' History of the World - Vol X

Synopsis

Few histories afford lessons of greater value than those of Spain and Portugal. They teem with proofs that independence and liberty are not less important to the wealth and political power of a country than to its happiness; that neither natural advantages nor the character of the inhabitants, neither increase of territory nor external peace and domestic tranquillity can in any measure counterbalance the destructive effects of a foreign yoke, or of a despotic government.

The Spanish peninsula, considered as a whole, combines most of the advantages of an insular, with those of a continental, position. Almost entirely surrounded by the sea, Spain is an island with regard to trade and fisheries; whilst the neck of land that connects her with France at once furnishes in the Pyrenees a mountainous barrier against that country, and preserves her from entire dependence upon winds and waves in her external relations.

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