The labouring classes found that their condition,
instead of becoming bettered by the revolution, had suffered to no small
degree. It was not surprising, indeed, that at the time these
unfortunate folk could discern no benefit, but only added curses from
this state of liberation of which they had heard so much, and of which
they were now in the so-called enjoyment. Very great numbers of the men
had been killed in the course of the war, and their wives and children
were left behind in a condition of misery and starvation.
Curiously enough, too, although the goods which now entered these
countries from abroad had, owing to the intelligent methods of the new
Governments, become so reduced in price that in ordinary circumstances
they should have been within the range of all, the peasant could no
longer afford to pay even for these cheap luxuries. The rich Spaniards,
the employers of labour, were now no longer on the spot to give out work
and to pay wages. In the industrial confusion the peasant only on the
rarest occasions found anyone capable of occupying his labour. He was
thus reduced to attempt the formation of a self-contained establishment
of his own, a matter which, in the majority of cases, was sufficiently
difficult.
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