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The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3

W >> William H. Prescott >> The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3




A pragmatic was passed, in 1491, at the petition 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, constituted,
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 classes 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 passed 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 classes. [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 petition 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 noble 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 coarser 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 glass
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 circumstances, 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 grass-grown streets, their palaces and temples
crumbling into dust, their massive 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 circumstance 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 institutions 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,
canals, 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
embellishing and adding in various ways to the accommodations of the
cities; [94] for relieving the subject from onerous tolls and oppressive
monopolies; [95] for establishing 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 constitution, which bore considerable
analogy 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 circumstance 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 institutions 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 nobler 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 constituted 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 hoard 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 noble 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
circumnavigation 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 passed 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.
[120]

On these grounds, Ferdinand openly assumed for himself and his ministers
the responsibility of maintaining this vicious institution; and
subsequently issued an ordinance to that effect, accompanied, however, by
a variety of humane and equitable regulations for restraining its abuse.
[121] The license was embraced in its full extent; the regulations were
openly disregarded. [122] Several years after, in 1515, Las Casas, moved
by the spectacle of human suffering, returned to Spain, and pleaded the
cause of the injured native, in tones which made the dying monarch tremble
on his throne. It was too late, however, for the king to execute the
remedial measures he contemplated. [123] The efficient interference of
Ximenes, who sent a commission for the purpose to Hispaniola, was attended
with no permanent results. And the indefatigable "protector of the
Indians" was left to sue for redress at the court of Charles, and to
furnish a splendid, if not a solitary example there, of a bosom penetrated
with the true spirit of Christian philanthropy. [124]

I have elsewhere examined the policy pursued by the Catholic sovereigns in
the government of their colonies. The supply of precious metals yielded by
them eventually proved far greater than had ever entered into the
conception of the most sanguine of the early discoverers. Their prolific
soil and genial climate, moreover, afforded an infinite variety of
vegetable products, which might have furnished an unlimited commerce with
the mother country. Under a judicious protection, their population and
productions, steadily increasing, would have enlarged to an incalculable
extent the general resources of the empire. Such, indeed, might have been
the result of a wise system of legislation.

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