Even now we are dragging along the consequences of this plague which lasted for centuries.

To save this country from death what had to be done?
The foreigners had to be called in, and the Bourbons came.

See how low we had fallen that we had not even soldiers.

In this land, even if we were wanting in other advantages, we could from the earliest days reckon on good warlike leaders; but look, in the war of succession we had to have English and French generals, and even officers, for there was not a Spaniard who could train a cannon or command a company; we had no one to serve us as a minister, and under Philip V.and Fernando VI.

all the Government were foreigners, strangers called in to revive the lost manufactures, to reclaim the derelict lands, to repair the ancient irrigation channels, and to found colonies in the deserts inhabited by wild beasts and bandits.