Historical and Descriptive Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence in South America (Vol 1 of 3) / Containing travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Colombia; with an account of the revolution, its rise, progress, and results

by active 1803-1825 William Bennet Stevenson

All property found was to be delivered to the solicitor of the treasury; and if it remained one year unclaimed it was declared to belong to the crown. All contraband or confiscated property paid to the King the duties which would have been paid had the commodity been regularly imported or exported; after which the value produced by sale, the aprovechamiento being deducted, was divided among the informer, the captors, the intendant, the Council of Indies and the King. Fines imposed as penalties in the different courts of justice belonged to the crown, and were paid into the treasury. The property of any person dying intestate appertained to the King. The revenue arising from commerce was exacted under a great many heads, and was as complicated a system as the rest of the Spanish proceedings, which appeared to be directed to the employment of a number of officers and the diminution of finance.

The almoxarifasgo was paid on whatever was either shipped or landed; on entering any Spanish port five per cent. was paid, on going out, two per cent.

The corso was levied on entry as well as departure, being in both cases two per cent. The duty called armada was a tax established for defraying the expenses incurred in the protection of vessels against pirates; that of corso against enemies in time of war; but although the former might not exist, and the latter have ceased, the tax was still levied, in contradiction to the old rule, that the effect ceases with the cause. The armada was four per cent. on entry, and two on departure. The duty of the consulate was received at the maritime custom houses, and the product accounted for to the tribunal; it was one per cent. on entry, and one on departure.

Besides the foregoing taxes, the tariff taxes were paid, the list of which would be too long for insertion. In 1810 the Viceroy Abascal issued a decree, by which British manufactured goods were permitted to be brought across the Isthmus of Panama, and thence to Callao, on condition of their paying a duty of thirty-seven and a half per cent., called el derecho de cirquito, circuit duty, in addition to all the other taxes. A merchant in Lima assured me, that having remitted thirty thousand dollars to Jamaica, to be employed in the purchase of cotton goods, the expenses of freight, the porterage, and the duties together amounted to forty-two thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars by the time the goods were warehoused in Lima.

Among the ecclesiastical contributions to the state were major and minor vacancies, which were the rents of vacant bishoprics, prebendaries and canonries; these rents were paid into the treasury until the new dignitary was appointed, and took possession of his benefice.

The mesada ecclesiastica was the amount of the first month, or the twelfth part of the annual income of each rector after his presentation to a new benefice. This was estimated by the solicitor of the treasury, and religiously exacted.

The media anata ecclesiastica was the proceeds of the first six months which the dignitaries and canons of the chapters paid out of the income of their benefices. Restitution was the money which penitents delivered to their confessors, being the amount of what they believed they had defrauded the crown, by smuggling, or other unlawful practices. The name of the restitutionist was kept a profound secret; all that the confessor had to do was, to deliver the money he might receive to the collector at the treasury. This was giving to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.

The greatest amount of revenue which the King received from the church arose from the sale of bulls; and of these there was a great variety. Jovellanos says, in his description of the pope's bulls, "that they are a periodical publication of the highest price, least value, meanest type, and worst paper; all buy them, few read them, and none understand them."

The bulls were first granted by the popes as a kind of passport to heaven to all those who died in the wars against infidels; they contained most extraordinary dispensations, both with respect to Christian duties in this world and to the punishment due to crimes in the next; and although the crusades, and other wars that drove men to heaven, or to some other place, at the point of the lance, or sword, had ceased, yet the influence of the bulls in increasing the revenue was of too great importance to the king for him to allow them to die with the cause that gave them birth: their effects were too useful to be renounced.