The assertion of the absolute authority of the king over the Indies was never neglected or allowed to lapse. The adventurers who discovered and explored the West Indies, Central and South America, Mexico, and much of what is now territory of the United States; the captains who conquered these lands; the governors who organized and ruled them; the colonists who occupied them—all drew their permission so to act from the king, or if they went beyond their commissions quickly legitimated their actions by an appeal to him for an act of indemnity and a more adequate commission. Foreigners were by the edict of the king excluded from the Spanish possessions, or permitted a narrow field of action there; the policy of the colonies in matters of trade, relations with the natives, religion, and finance was dictated by the king. Upon the advice of his Council of the Indies he issued a continuous series of rules and ordinances, and finally drew up for the American possessions the "New Laws."
Yet supreme over her colonies as was the absolute monarchy of Spain, a false idea of their condition would be obtained if it were forgotten that the monarchy was only one of the national institutions. Other political habits of the people were firmly established as well as that of subserviency to the crown. Spain was the classic land of participation of all classes in government through the cortes; almost as old as the monarchy were the fueros, or franchises and charters; protected by these fueros, the cities and towns had become numerous, powerful, and almost self-governing; and even rural communities had in many cases a complicated and semi-independent system of control of their own affairs.
The cortes may be neglected here, since no such representative body ever arose in the colonies; but the same is not true of local self- governing municipalities. Not only were they characteristic of Spain, but analogous institutions were established as a Spanish population grew up and was organized in the Indies, where there was a strong tendency to revert to practical self-government and thus to defeat the centralizing policy of the monarchy.
Several hundred cities, towns, and rural communities in Spain held fueros granted to them by the king, a great noble, or some ecclesiastical body. These charters in many cases dated from the eleventh or twelfth century and conceded the most extensive rights and privileges. Under them townsmen could surround themselves with a wall, organize a military force, elect their own magistrates, judge their own inhabitants, collect their own taxes, pay only a fixed sum to the crown, and in other ways live almost as a separate political body under the general protection only of the king. [Footnote: Antequera, Hist. de la Legislation Espanola, 128-139.]
Notwithstanding many differences among the towns in size, character, and political privileges, among those of Castile there was a certain similarity of organization which may be described as follows, and may be looked upon as the type on which municipalities in Spanish America were originally constructed. [Footnote: Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xv.]
The citizens who possessed full political rights were known in the most general sense as vecinos; when acting as electors they were spoken of as forming the concejo, cabildo, or council. The actual body which met and directed municipal affairs was the ayuntamiento, made up of the more important magistrates and officials, of whom there was usually a considerable number and variety. The alcaldes exercised judicial functions, both civil and criminal; the regidores had charge of the administrative work of the community; the corregidores of its oversight in the interest of the king; the alguazil mayor commanded the military forces; the mayor domo had the oversight of the town property. In some towns one or more of the alcaldes had the title of alcalde mayor, and held a presiding function. There were various lower officials, such as alarifes, rayones, and others in great variety. [Footnote: Antequera, Hist. de la Legislation Espanola, App. ix., 542.] The town officials were in some cases appointed by the king, in others elected by the vecinos, in still others divided between royal and local appointment. They were usually drawn from the body of the citizens, but in some cases from gentlemen or even noblemen who had houses in the town or simply owned property there.
This municipal organization and certain other ancient institutions tended to reappear in the colonies, and thus to modify and limit that absolutism of the central government which was without doubt the leading characteristic of the Spanish colonial system. The provincial interests of the colonists also opposed the monarchy. The great distance of the colonies from Spain, the rigidity of official custom, the difference between the interests of the colonists and the desires of the government, and the lack of vigor at home combined to prevent a really effective control of the colonies. "Obedezcase, pero no se cumpla" (Let it be obeyed, but not enforced) was a saying sufficiently descriptive of the attitude of the colonies towards unpopular decrees from home.
The servitude of men of dependent races, which became such a fundamental characteristic of Spanish America, is an instance of this incompleteness of control by the central government. Slavery was a product of American conditions and was not general in the mother- country. A small number of Moorish slaves captured in war and of negroes imported through Portugal were scattered through Spain, but they did not form a class, and were protected rather than depressed by the law. [Footnote: Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, 2.]
Slavery in America was always distasteful to the home government, and only reluctantly permitted because of the apparent necessities of the case and in the hope of ameliorating the lot of the Indians. The whole plan of the asiento was based on the principle of regulating and limiting slavery. The shameful extermination of the native races of the West Indies is a long, sad history of kindly intentions and wise regulations on the part of the home government, made nugatory by the determined self-interest and heartless cruelty of the colonists. [Footnote: Lea, "The Indian Policy of Spain" (in Yale Review, August, 1899); Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xviii.] The fervor of Las Casas could readily obtain from the Spanish monarchs proclamations declaring the freedom of the Indians and even definite statutes providing for their good treatment; but neither his fervor nor the monarch's power could secure the enforcement of the laws or save the miserable natives. [Footnote: Lea, "The Indian Policy of Spain" (Yale Review, August, 1899), 132, 135, 138, 141, 143. etc]
In theory the Spanish sovereigns ruled the Indies with an autocratic sway. In practice the colonies were governed by a bureaucracy or, more commonly, allowed to drift. Yet by the forms of Spanish rule they were deprived of all wholesome local freedom, of all power of independent action, and of all deliberate choice of their own policy. They did not, therefore, develop during their colonial period a robust provincial life and character; and only late and with great difficulty did they struggle into independence and obtain self-government. [Footnote: Paxson, The Independence of the South-American Republics, chap. i.]