Volume III Part 37 (1/2)

By a pragmatic of 1500, all persons, whether natives or foreigners, were prohibited from s.h.i.+pping goods in foreign bottoms, from a port where a Spanish s.h.i.+p could be obtained. [59] Another prohibited the sale of vessels to foreigners. [60] Another offered a large premium on all vessels of a certain tonnage and upwards; [61] and others held out protection and various immunities to seamen. [62] The drift of the first of these laws, like that of the famous English navigation act, so many years later, was, as the preamble sets forth, to exclude foreigners from the carrying trade; and the others were equally designed to build up a marine, for the defence, as well as commerce of the country. In this, the sovereigns were favored by their important colonial acquisitions, the distance of which, moreover, made it expedient to employ vessels of greater burden than those hitherto used. The language of subsequent laws, as well as various circ.u.mstances within our knowledge, attest the success of these provisions. The number of vessels in the merchant service of Spain, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, amounted to a thousand, according to Campomanes. [63] We may infer the flouris.h.i.+ng condition of their commercial marine from their military, as shown in the armaments sent at different times against the Turks, or the Barbary corsairs. [64] The convoy which accompanied the infanta Joanna to Flanders, in 1496, consisted of one hundred and thirty vessels, great and small, having a force of more than twenty thousand men on board; a formidable equipment, inferior only to that of the far-famed ”Invincible Armada.” [65]

A pragmatic was pa.s.sed, in 1491, at the pet.i.tion of the inhabitants of the northern provinces, requiring English and other foreign traders to take their returns in the fruits or merchandise of the country, and not in gold or silver. This law seems to have been designed less to benefit the manufacturer, than to preserve the precious metals in the country. [66] It was the same in purport with other laws prohibiting the exportation of these metals, whether in coin or bullion. They were not new in Spain, nor indeed peculiar to her. [67] They proceeded on the principle that gold and silver, independently of their value as a commercial medium, const.i.tuted, in a peculiar sense, the wealth of a country. This error, common, as I have said, to other European nations, was eminently fatal to Spain, since the produce of its native mines before the discovery of America, [68] and of those in that quarter afterwards, formed its great staple. As such, these metals should have enjoyed every facility for transportation to other countries, where their higher value would afford a corresponding profit to the exporter.

The sumptuary laws of Ferdinand and Isabella are open, for the most part, to the same objections with those just noticed. Such laws, prompted in a great degree, no doubt, by the declamations of the clergy against the pomp and vanities of the world, were familiar, in early times, to most European states. There was ample scope for them in Spain, where the example of their Moslem neighbors had done much to infect all cla.s.ses with a fondness for sumptuous apparel, and a showy magnificence of living. Ferdinand and Isabella fell nothing short of the most zealous of their predecessors, in their efforts to restrain this improvident luxury. They did, however, what few princes on the like occasions have done--enforced the precept by their own example. Some idea of their habitual economy, or rather frugality, may be formed from a remonstrance presented by the commons to Charles the Fifth, soon after his accession, which represents his daily household expenses as amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand maravedies; while those of the Catholic sovereigns were rarely fifteen thousand, or one- tenth of that sum. [69]

They pa.s.sed several salutary laws for restraining the ambitious expenditure at weddings and funerals, as usual, most affected by those who could least afford it. [70] In 1494, they issued a pragmatic, prohibiting the importation or manufacture of brocades, or of gold or silver embroidery, and also plating with these metals. The avowed object was to check the growth of luxury and the waste of the precious metals. [71]

These provisions had the usual fate of laws of this kind. They gave an artificial and still higher value to the prohibited article. Some evaded them. Others indemnified themselves for the privation, by some other, and scarcely less expensive variety of luxury. Such, for example, were the costly silks, which came into more general use after the conquest of Granada. But here the government, on remonstrance of the cortes, again interposed its prohibition, restricting the privilege of wearing them to certain specified cla.s.ses. [72] Nothing, obviously, could be more impolitic than these various provisions directed against manufactures, which, under proper encouragement, or indeed without any, from the peculiar advantages afforded by the country, might have formed an important branch of industry, whether for the supply of foreign markets, or for home consumption.

Notwithstanding these ordinances, we find one, in 1500, at the pet.i.tion of the silk-growers in Granada, against the introduction of silk thread from the kingdom of Naples; [73] thus encouraging the production of the raw material, while they interdicted the uses to which it could be applied.

Such are the inconsistencies into which a government is betrayed by an over-zealous and impertinent spirit of legislation!

The chief exports of the country in this reign were the fruits and natural products of the soil, the minerals, of which a great variety was deposited in its bosom, and the simpler manufactures, as sugar, dressed skins, oil, wine, steel, etc. [74] The breed of Spanish horses, celebrated in ancient times, had been greatly improved by the cross with the Arabian. It had, however, of late years fallen into neglect; until the government, by a number of judicious laws, succeeded in restoring it to such repute, that this n.o.ble animal became an extensive article of foreign trade. [75] But the chief staple of the country was wool; which, since the introduction of English sheep at the close of the fourteenth century, had reached a degree of fineness and beauty that enabled it, under the present reign, to compete with any other in Europe. [76]

To what extent the finer manufactures were carried, or made an article of export, is uncertain. The vagueness of. statistical information in these early times has given rise to much crude speculation and to extravagant estimates of their resources, which have been met by a corresponding skepticism in later and more scrutinizing critics. Capmany, the most acute of these, has advanced the opinion, that these coa.r.s.er cloths only were manufactured in Castile, and those exclusively for home consumption. [77]

The royal ordinances, however, imply, in the character and minuteness of their regulations, a very considerable proficiency in many of the mechanic arts. [78] Similar testimony is borne by intelligent foreigners, visiting or residing in the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century; who notice the fine cloths and manufacture of arms in Segovia, [79] the silks and velvets of Granada and Valencia, [80] the woollen and silk fabrics of Toledo, which gave employment to ten thousand artisans, [81] and curiously wrought plate of Valladolid, [82] and the fine cutlery and gla.s.s manufactures of Barcelona, rivalling those of Venice. [83]

The recurrence of seasons of scarcity, and the fluctuation of prices, might suggest a reasonable distrust of the excellence of the husbandry under this reign. [84] The turbulent condition of the country may account for this pretty fairly during the early part of it. Indeed, a neglect of agriculture, to the extent implied by these circ.u.mstances, is wholly irreconcilable with the general tenor of Ferdinand and Isabella's legislation, which evidently relies on this as the main spring of national prosperity. It is equally repugnant, moreover, to the reports of foreigners, who could best compare the state of the country with that of others at the same period. They extol the fruitfulness of a soil, which yielded the products of the most opposite climes; the hills clothed with vineyards and plantations of fruit trees, much more abundant, it would seem, in the northern regions, than at the present day; the valleys and delicious vegas, glowing with the ripe exuberance of southern vegetation; extensive districts, now smitten with the curse of barrenness, where the traveller scarce discerns the vestige of a road or of a human habitation, but which then teemed with all that was requisite to the sustenance of the populous cities in their neighborhood. [85]

The inhabitant of modern Spain or Italy, who wanders amid the ruins of their stately cities, their gra.s.s-grown streets, their palaces and temples crumbling into dust, their ma.s.sive bridges choking up the streams they once proudly traversed, the very streams themselves, which bore navies on their bosoms, shrunk into too shallow a channel for the meanest craft to navigate,--the modern Spaniard who surveys these vestiges of a giant race, the tokens of his nation's present degeneracy, must turn for relief to the prouder and earlier period of her history, when only such great works could have been achieved; and it is no wonder that he should be led, in his enthusiasm, to invest it with a romantic and exaggerated coloring.

[86] Such a period in Spain cannot be looked for in the last, still less in the seventeenth century, for the nation had then reached the lowest ebb of its fortunes; [87] nor in the close of the sixteenth, for the desponding language of cortes shows that the work of decay and depopulation had then already begun. [88] It can only be found in the first half of that century, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and that of their successor, Charles the Fifth; in which last, the state, under the strong impulse it had received, was carried onward in the career of prosperity, in spite of the ignorance and mismanagement of those who guided it.

There is no country which has been guilty of such wild experiments, or has showed, on the whole, such profound ignorance of the true principles of economical science, as Spain under the sceptre of the family of Austria.

And, as it is not always easy to discriminate between their acts and those of Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circ.u.mstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws, mischievous in their eventual operation, were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add, that what was intrinsically bad, has been aggravated ten fold under the blind legislation of their successors. [89] It is also true, that many of the most exceptionable laws sanctioned by their names, are to be charged on their predecessors, who had ingrafted their principles into the system long before; [90] and many others are to be vindicated by the general practice of other nations, which authorized retaliation on the score of self-defence. [91]

Nothing is easier than to parade abstract theorems,--true in the abstract,--in political economy; nothing harder than to reduce them to practice. That an individual will understand his own interests better than the government can, or, what is the same thing, that trade, if let alone, will find its way into the channels on the whole most advantageous to the community, few will deny. But what is true of all together is not true of any one singly; and no one nation can safely act on these principles, if others do not. In point of fact, no nation has acted on them since the formation of the present political communities of Europe.

All that a new state, or a new government in an old one, can now propose to itself is, not to sacrifice its interests to a speculative abstraction, but to accommodate its inst.i.tutions to the great political system, of which it is a member. On these principles, and on the higher obligation of providing the means of national independence in its most extended sense, much that was bad in the economical policy of Spain, at the period under review, may be vindicated.

It would be unfair to direct our view to the restrictive measures of Ferdinand and Isabella, without noticing also the liberal tenor of their legislation in regard to a great variety of objects. Such, for example, are the laws encouraging foreigners to settle in the country; [92] those for facilitating communication by internal improvements, roads, bridges, ca.n.a.ls, on a scale of unprecedented magnitude; [93] for a similar attention to the wants of navigation, by constructing moles, quays, lighthouses along the coast, and deepening and extending the harbors, ”to accommodate,” as the acts set forth, ”the great increase of trade;” for embellis.h.i.+ng and adding in various ways to the accommodations of the cities; [94] for relieving the subject from onerous tolls and oppressive monopolies; [95] for establis.h.i.+ng a uniform currency and standard of weights and measures throughout the kingdom, [96] objects of unwearied solicitude through this whole reign; for maintaining a police, which, from the most disorderly and dangerous, raised Spain, in the language of Martyr, to be the safest country in Christendom [97] for such equal justice, as secured to every man the fruits of his own industry, inducing him to embark his capital in useful enterprises; and, finally, for enforcing fidelity to contracts, [98] of which the sovereigns gave such a glorious example in their own administration, as effectually restored that public credit, which is the true basis of public prosperity.

While these important reforms were going on in the interior of the monarchy, it experienced a greater change in its external condition by the immense augmentation of its territory. The most important of its foreign acquisitions were those nearest home, Granada and Navarre; at least, they were the ones most capable, from their position, of being brought under control, and thoroughly and permanently identified with the Spanish monarchy. Granada, as we have seen, was placed under the sceptre of Castile, governed by the same laws, and represented in its cortes, being, in the strictest sense, part and parcel of the kingdom. Navarre was also united to the same crown. But its const.i.tution, which bore considerable a.n.a.logy to that of Aragon, remained substantially the same as before. The government, indeed, was administered by a viceroy; but Ferdinand made as few changes as possible, permitting it to retain its own legislature, its ancient courts of law, and its laws themselves. So the forms, if not the spirit of independence, continued to survive its union with the victorious state. [99]

The other possessions of Spain were scattered over the various quarters of Europe, Africa, and America. Naples was the conquest of Aragon; or, at least, made on behalf of that crown. The queen appears to have taken no part in the conduct of that war, whether distrusting its equity, or its expediency, in the belief that a distant possession in the heart of Europe would probably cost more to maintain than it was worth. In fact, Spain is the only nation, in modern times, which has been able to keep its hold on such possessions for any very considerable period; a circ.u.mstance implying more wisdom in her policy than is commonly conceded to her. The fate of the acquisitions alluded to forms no exception to the remark; and Naples, like Sicily, continued permanently ingrafted on the kingdom of Aragon.

A fundamental change in the inst.i.tutions of Naples became requisite to accommodate them to its new relations. Its great offices of state and its legal tribunals were reorganized. Its jurisprudence, which, under the Angevin race, and even the first Aragonese, had been adapted to French usages, was now modelled on the Spanish. The various innovations were conducted by the Catholic king with his usual prudence; and the reform in the legislation is commended by a learned and impartial Italian civilian, as breathing a spirit of moderation and wisdom. [100] He conceded many privileges to the people, and to the capital especially, whose venerable university he resuscitated from the decayed state into which it had fallen, making liberal appropriations from the treasury for its endowment.

The support of a mercenary army, and the burdens incident to the war, pressed heavily on the people during the first years of his reign. But the Neapolitans, who, as already noticed, had been transferred too often from one victor to another to be keenly sensible to the loss of political independence, were gradually reconciled to his administration, and testified their sense of its beneficent character by celebrating the anniversary of his death, for more than two centuries, with public solemnities, as a day of mourning throughout the kingdom. [101]

But far the most important of the distant acquisitions of Spain were those secured to her by the genius of Columbus and the enlightened patronage of Isabella. Imagination had ample range in the boundless perspective of these unknown regions; but the results actually realized from the discoveries, during the queen's life, were comparatively insignificant. In a mere financial view, they had been a considerable charge on the crown.

This was, indeed, partly owing to the humanity of Isabella, who interfered, as we have seen, to prevent the compulsory exaction of Indian labor. This was subsequently, and immediately after her death indeed, carried to such an extent, that nearly half a million of ounces of gold were yearly drawn from the mines of Hispaniola alone. [102] The pearl fisheries, [103] and the culture of the sugar-cane, introduced from the Canaries, [104] yielded large returns under the same inhuman system.

Ferdinand, who enjoyed, by the queen's testament, half the amount of the Indian revenues, was now fully awakened to their importance. It would be unjust, however, to suppose his views limited to immediate pecuniary profits; for the measures he pursued were, in many respects, well contrived to promote the n.o.bler ends of discovery and colonization. He invited the persons most eminent for nautical science and enterprise, as Pinzon, Solis, Vespucci, to his court, where they const.i.tuted a sort of board of navigation, constructing charts, and tracing out new routes for projected voyages. [105] The conduct of this department was intrusted to the last-mentioned navigator, who had the glory, the greatest which accident and caprice ever granted to man, of giving his name to the new hemisphere.

Fleets were now fitted out on a more extended scale, which might vie, indeed, with the splendid equipments of the Portuguese, whose brilliant successes in the east excited the envy of their Castilian rivals. The king occasionally took a share in the voyage, independently of the interest which of right belonged to the crown. [106.]

The government, however, realized less from these expensive enterprises than individuals, many of whom, enriched by their official stations, or by accidentally falling in with some h.o.a.rd of treasure among the savages, returned home to excite the envy and cupidity of their countrymen. [107]

But the spirit of adventure was too high among the Castilians to require such incentive, especially when excluded from its usual field in Africa and Europe. A striking proof of the facility, with which the romantic cavaliers of that day could be directed to this new career of danger on the ocean, was given at the time of the last-meditated expedition into Italy under the Great Captain. A squadron of fifteen vessels, bound for the New World, was then riding in the Guadalquivir. Its complement was limited to one thousand two hundred men; but, on Ferdinand's countermanding Gonsalvo's enterprise, more than three thousand volunteers, many of them of n.o.ble family, equipped with unusual magnificence for the Italian service, hastened to Seville, and pressed to be admitted into the Indian armada. [108] Seville itself was in a manner depopulated by the general fever of emigration, so that it actually seemed, says a contemporary, to be tenanted only by women. [109]

In this universal excitement, the progress of discovery was pushed forward with a success, inferior, indeed, to what might have been effected in the present state of nautical skill and science, but extraordinary for the times. The winding depths of the Gulf of Mexico were penetrated, as well as the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus, which connects the American continents. In 1512, Florida was discovered by a romantic old knight, Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical fountain of health, found his grave there. [110] Solis, another navigator, who had charge of an expedition, projected by Ferdinand, [111] to reach the South Sea by the circ.u.mnavigation of the continent, ran down the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where he also was cut off by the savages. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa penetrated, with a handful of men, across the narrow part of the Isthmus of Darien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras, the first of Europeans, was greeted with the long-promised vision of the southern ocean. [112] The intelligence of this event excited a sensation in Spain, inferior only to that caused by the discovery of America. The great object which had so long occupied the imagination of the nautical men of Europe, and formed the purpose of Columbus's last voyage, the discovery of a communication with these far western waters, was accomplished. The famous spice islands, from which the Portuguese had drawn such countless sums of wealth, were scattered over this sea; and the Castilians, after a journey of a few leagues, might launch their barks on its quiet bosom, and reach, and perhaps claim, the coveted possessions of their rivals, as falling west of the papal line of demarkation. Such were the dreams, and such the actual progress of discovery, at the close of Ferdinand's reign.

Our admiration of the dauntless heroism displayed by the early Spanish navigators, in their extraordinary career, is much qualified by a consideration of the cruelties with which it was tarnished; too great to be either palliated or pa.s.sed over in silence by the historian. As long as Isabella lived, the Indians found an efficient friend and protector; but ”her death,” says the venerable Las Casas, ”was the signal for their destruction.” [113] Immediately on that event, the system of _repartimientos_, originally authorized, as we have seen, by Columbus, who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the crown's absolute right of property over the natives, [114] was carried to its full extent in the colonies. [115] Every Spaniard, however humble, had his proportion of slaves; and men, many of them not only incapable of estimating the awful responsibility of the situation, but without the least touch of humanity in their natures, were individually intrusted with the unlimited disposal of the lives and destinies of their fellow-creatures. They abused this trust in the grossest manner; tasking the unfortunate Indian far beyond his strength, inflicting the most refined punishments on the indolent, and hunting down those who resisted or escaped, like so many beasts of chase, with ferocious bloodhounds. Every step of the white man's progress in the New World, may be said to have been on the corpse of a native. Faith is staggered by the recital of the number of victims immolated in these fair regions within a very few years after the discovery; and the heart sickens at the loathsome details of barbarities, recorded by one, who, if his sympathies have led him sometimes to over-color, can never be suspected of wilfully misstating facts, of which he was an eye-witness. [116] A selfish indifference to the rights of the original occupants of the soil, is a sin which lies at the door of most of the primitive European settlers, whether papist or puritan, of the New World. But it is light, in comparison with the fearful amount of crimes to be charged on the early Spanish colonists; crimes that have, perhaps, in this world, brought down the retribution of Heaven, which has seen fit to turn this fountain of inexhaustible wealth and prosperity to the nation into the waters of bitterness.

It may seem strange, that no relief was afforded by the government to these oppressed subjects. But Ferdinand, if we may credit Las Casas, was never permitted to know the extent of the injuries done to them. [117] He was surrounded by men in the management of the Indian department, whose interest it was to keep him in ignorance. [118] The remonstrances of some zealous missionaries led him, [119] in 1501, to refer the subject of the repartimientos to a council of jurists and theologians. This body yielded to the representations of the advocates of the system, that it was indispensable for maintaining the colonies, since the European was altogether unequal to labor in this tropical climate; and that it, moreover, afforded the only chance for the conversion of the Indian, who, unless compelled, could never be brought in contact with the white man.