with all our experience and culture at their command, without any of the obsolete burdens and impediments which in the course of a thousand years have become inseparable from our institutions, and with a country which will want more labour and more people for many generations to come."
Then comes a characteristic passage about himself:—
"I am quite well again. Though never perhaps very strong, and rarely so well as to feel mere existence a delight (as to a really healthy person it must be; no inferior condition, in my opinion, deserves the name of health), I am seldom what we call unwell. When travelling about I always find myself immensely better than when confined to one place. With money, I believe I should never have a home, but be always going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it, like him of whom I am one of the children."
Soon after his return from America he was engaged by the proprietors of the New York World to go to Spain as their Special Correspondent with the Carlists, who were then (1873) in insurrection against the Republican government. Their cause was apparently prospering, and it was supposed that they were about to make a bold stroke and march upon Madrid. This however they did not attempt, and though there was much marching and counter-marching there was very little real fighting. Thomson gave in the pages of the Secularist an entertaining account of his Spanish experiences. He remained in Spain about two months, and whilst there was for a time prostrated by a sun-stroke.
Shortly after his return to England, he became
