wider outlook than most of his colleagues possessed. He was the enemy of españolismo, wanted his nation to take a prominent part in European affairs, and no longer to lead the life of a hermit nation. But he is no jingo. He speaks against the bill to add fifty thousand to the standing army. Spain had passed through too many upheavals. What she needed to make her a European power was tranquility and opportunity to develop financial strength. Give the producing classes their long-awaited innings. But he is bitter against the magnates of the bourse and those politicians who legislate to produce an artificial rise in values. The true policy is to better the condition of the masses, to encourage agriculture and manufactures: even the construction of railways should wait until there is first something to haul over them. But manufactures should not be protected by a tariff. In his speech against the tariff on cotton he shows himself an out and out free-trader. He praises the English for their policy of free trade, enlightened self-interest he deems it, which tends to make the world one large family. As a writer he had inveighed against commercialism. But he now discerns a future where commerce shall replace war. He was unable to foresee that in the future trade was to be a chief cause of war.

That he was a ready debater is shown by his neat rejoinder to Deputy Fontán. This gentleman had made sneering allusions to men of letters who dabbled in diplomacy. Far from accepting the remark as a thrust at himself, as it was intended, Espronceda resented it as an insult to the then American minister Washington Irving, "novelist of the first rank, known in Europe through his writings even more than through the brilliancy of his diplomatic career."

Espronceda's health had been failing for some months. It is said that chronic throat trouble had so weakened his voice as to make his remarks in the Cortés scarcely audible. On May 18, 1842, he journeyed on horseback to Aranjuez to visit Doña Bernarda Beruete, a young lady to whom he was then engaged. Hastily returning to Madrid on the afternoon of the same day, so as not to miss a night session of the Cortés, he contracted a cold which soon turned into a fatal bronchitis. Others say he was taken ill at a reception given by Espartero. He died May 23, 1842, at the early age of 34. He was honored with a public funeral in keeping with his position as deputy and distinguished man of letters. His first place of burial was the cemetery of San Nicolás; but in 1902 his remains, together with those of Larra, were exhumed and reburied in the Pantheon for Distinguished Men of the Nineteenth Century, situated in the Patio de Santa Gertrudis 

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