Biscay is not obliged to pay any government impositions: the king has no certain revenue from Biscay, but when money is wanted, he must ask it, and a part of what is demanded is generally given; but if any demand be made inconsistent with the laws or privileges of Biscay, a thing that has sometimes happened, Biscay returns this contradictory answer; “_Se obedese, y no se cumple_.”
The head of the province, is the Corregidor, who is named by the king of Spain; but an appeal from the corregidor to the deputies, seems to render the precedence of the corregidor merely nominal. The deputies are elected thus: the general election for the nomination of deputies, syndics, and regidores, takes place every three years. Each village within the province sends one or two electors, according to its size; the names of the villages are written upon separate pieces of paper, and all are put into a wheel, and the first four that turn up, have the right of election, or of naming the public functionaries of the province.
The privileges, the civil laws, and the maritime laws of Biscay, are contained in three separate volumes; the latter of these form the basis of the maritime laws of Spanish South America.
Waggon travelling; Scenery; Bills of Fare, and Expenses; second Visit to Vittoria; Departure for Madrid; the Ebro; Privileges of the Military; Old Castile; Husbandry; Burgos; Beggars; Posadas; Traits of Misery in a Castilian Village; New Castile; Quixotic Adventure; the Somo-sierra and Approach to the Capital; Sketches of the Environs, and Arrival in Madrid; Information for Travellers.
Upon those roads in Spain where there are no diligences, the traveller may generally find an _ordinario_, or _galera_; two kinds of waggons, the former without, the latter commonly, but not always, with springs, in either of which he may be accommodated with a place,--a seat I can scarcely call it,--at a price, moderate in comparison with the enormous expense of hiring a private conveyance. In one of these _ordinarios_, I left Bilbao for Vittoria, by a road different from that by which I had already travelled. Nothing can be more luxurious than travelling by a waggon on springs during hot weather: neither diligence nor private carriage can be compared with it: it is open before and behind, so that there is a fine current of air; it is covered above, so that the sun is excluded, and the traveller may lie all his length upon clean straw. As for the rate of travelling, it is not indeed very rapid; but fifty miles a day is a sufficient distance for one who is desirous of seeing the country he passes through: waggons with springs, however, are much more rarely to be met with, than those without them; and the jolting, of course, neutralizes in part the other advantages I have named.