A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

All this fell with peculiar weight on agriculture and on the labradores or peasants, on whom ultimately the support and prosperity of the nation depended. When, in 1619, the Royal Council, in obedience to the commands of Philip III, presented an elaborate consulta on the causes of depopulation, it commenced by ascribing this to the grinding and insupportable taxation of the producing taxables, and the exemption of the consuming classes—the mules and cart of the peasant were seized for taxes, he was driven from the land and hid himself in the large cities, or sought a livelihood abroad.[1048] The warning was unheeded and, ten years later, Fray Benito de Peñalosa y Mondragon, while enthusiastically extolling the power and wealth of Spain, describes the condition of the labradores as the poorest, most completely miserable and depressed of all, as though all the other classes had combined and conspired to ruin and destroy them. Their cabins and huts of mud walls are decaying and crumbling, they possess some badly cultivated lands and lean cattle, always hungry for lack of the common pasture, and they are burdened with tributes, mortgages, taxes, censos and many impositions, demands and almsgivings that cannot be escaped. In place of wondering at the depopulation of villages and farms, the wonder is that any remain. Probably most of those who go to the Colonies are labradores and they also flock to the cities, engaging in all kinds of service.[1049]

The process went on without interruption. A century later an experienced financial official tells the same story, in a report to Philip V. The burden of taxation fell upon the poor; all that was unpaid was added to the levy of the succeeding year; a horde of blood-suckers lived by selling out delinquents, when the costs amounted to more than the taxes. Consequently the poor were obliged to sell their property to meet the demands of the tax-gatherer, or to let it be seized and sold, thus becoming beggars and tramps, and every year saw their numbers increase. The peasant, moreover, was subject to special and ruinous restrictions. The tassa or price of his grain was officially determined every year, at a maximum above which he was forbidden to sell it; moreover it could not be exported, nor could it be transported by sea from one province to another to prevent infractions of the prohibition. The result of this was that if the harvest was deficient, grain was secreted and held at exorbitant prices and this infraction of the law was winked at under necessity. The sufferer was the peasant, who had not the means of storing his grain but had to sell it to the wealthy who could withhold it, and thus, whether the harvests were abundant or scanty he fared ill. Thus production was discouraged and diminishing; the producer realized little, while the consumer paid extravagantly, checking both production and consumption. Lands were left uncultivated and labor was unemployed; everything moved in a vicious circle, and the evil was constantly growing. Trade was similarly strangled. The alcavala of 10 per cent. and the cientos of 4 per cent. were levied on every transaction, no matter how often an article changed hands. Manufactures, under this system, had almost disappeared. Spaniards were forced to sell their raw products to foreigners at low prices, for there were no other buyers, and to purchase them back in their finished state at the sellers’ prices. The heavy tariff increased the cost to the consumer, while innumerable smugglers enabled the importers to realize the benefit of the duties. The foreigner, moreover, secured all the precious metals of the Indies, for all exports thither were of foreign goods, with which Spaniards could not compete, owing to the excessive imposts and tributes, which doubled the price of everything to the consumer. Yet of the product of these crushing burdens but little reached the treasury, owing to the system of collection, smuggling, and frauds.[1050]

THE MESTA—FORESTRY LAWS

The disabilities thus imposed on agriculture, industry, and trade were greatly aggravated by the absence of means of intercommunication, and it is symptomatic of Spanish policy that the energies of the rulers were concentrated on the suppression of heresy, foreign wars and court festivities to the exclusion of care for internal development. It is true that, under Charles V and Philip II, considerable effort was spent on the water-ways; the Canal Imperial de Aragon was built along the Ebro, as well as the smaller canals of Jarama and Manzanares, and there were improvements in the navigation of the Tagus and Guadalquivir, but these ceased and no attention was paid to the roads which, for the most part were mere caminos de herradura, or mule-tracks. Even as late as 1795, Jovellanos tells us that there was no communication by wagon between the contiguous provinces of Leon and Asturias, so that the wines and wheat of Castile could not bear the expense of mule carriage to the seaboard. In 1761 Carlos III undertook to construct highways from Madrid to Andalusia, Valencia, Catalonia, Galicia, Old Castile, Asturias, Murcia and Extremadura, but in 1795 none of them had reached half-way, and no attention was paid to interprovincial wagon-roads, to enable the miserable peasant to get from village to village, or from market to market, save at the cost of exhausting his cattle and at the risk of losing everything in a mudhole.[1051]

Another intolerable burden on agriculture was the Mesta, or combination of owners of the immense flocks of sheep, which wintered in the lowlands and summered in the mountains. Through privileges dating from the fourteenth century and gradually increased, the provinces, through which the trashumantes or migratory flocks passed, were subjected to serious disabilities. Pasturage could not be broken up for cultivation, its rental was fixed by an unalterable tassa, and a mesteño tenant could not be evicted. All enclosures were forbidden in order that the flocks when migrating might feed without payment on the stubble in the autumn and on the fallow land in the spring, although this privilege was somewhat curtailed in 1788 by permitting the enclosure of orchards, vineyards and plantations. Thus the husbandman was deprived of control over his property and the raising of horses and of stationary herds of cattle and sheep—vastly more important than the trashumantes—was effectually discouraged within the range of the Mesta. Equally short-sighted were the forestry laws, designed to foster the production of lumber, which was greatly needed both for building and shipping. The owner was obliged to get and pay for a permit before he could fell a tree, to obey fixed rules as to pruning, to sell against his will and at a fixed price, to admit inspections and official visits, and to answer for the condition and number of his trees—thus opening the door to unlimited extortion. In short, the freedom of action through which men seek their interests, and thus contribute to the general welfare, was destroyed by the paternalism of an absolute government, which blindly hampered all improvement and checked all individual initiative and ambition.[1052]

This explains the despoblados and baldíos—the depopulated villages and uncultivated lands—which were the despair of the statesmen who discussed the possible regeneration of Spain. According to Zavala, in the circumscription of Badajoz alone, the baldíos amounted to over three hundred square leagues, mostly good farm land, in which the remains of buildings could be traced, but then grown up in copses and thickets, affording refuge to wolves, smugglers and robbers. In Andalusia, Jovellanos tells us that these baldíos were immense; they were less in Extremadura, La Mancha and the two Castiles, while, in the northern provinces, from the Pyrenees to Portugal, the population was denser and the baldíos less frequent and of inferior quality.[1053] We have seen the attempt made by Carlos III to reclaim these districts with the nuevas poblaciones, and how the promising experiment was checked by the Inquisition.

INDOLENCE

As though these blind and irrational policies were insufficient to destroy prosperity, an equally efficient factor was devised in tampering with the coinage. This began tentatively in 1566 by Philip II, in diminishing the alloy of silver in the vellon or copper coinage. In 1602, Philip III, in his financial distress, was bolder and resolutely issued a pure copper coinage with a fictitious value of seven to two, calling forth the protest of Padre Mariana which cost him his prosecution by the Inquisition. In 1605 the Lucchese envoy informs us that the treasury had already reaped a profit of 25,000,000 ducats by this fiat money, of which the marc cost 80 maravedís and had a forced circulation of 280. This was the first of a long series of violent measures continued throughout the seventeenth century, of alternate expansion and contraction. Thus, in 1642 the fictitious legal-tender value was suddenly reduced to one-sixth, followed in 1643 by raising it fourfold, and in 1651 by increasing it still further. In 1652 an attempt was made to demonetize the vellon, June 25th, which was abandoned November 14th. In 1659 the vellon grueso was reduced in value one-half and, in 1660 it was trebled. Attempts were made to regulate prices by decrees of maxima and to prevent or define the inevitable premium on gold and silver, but the unwritten laws of trade were imperative, until at last, in 1718, the real de plata was admitted to be worth twice the real de vellon, a ratio which remained nearly permanent. The largest vellon coin was the cuartillo, or fourth of a real, equivalent to about three cents of American money, which became the standard of value in Spanish trade; the coins were tied in bags of definite amount and these passed from hand to hand, for the precious metals necessarily disappeared, and were rarely seen except in Seville, in spite of the most savage decrees against their exportation.[1054] It would be impossible to exaggerate the disastrous influence on industry and commerce of these perpetual fluctuations of the circulating medium. The relations between debtor and creditor, between producer and consumer, were ever at the mercy of some new decree that might upset all calculations. All transactions, from the purchase of a day’s supply of bread to a contract for a cargo of merchandise were mere gambling speculations.

These causes of decadence were accentuated by an aversion and contempt for labor, which was recognized as a Spanish characteristic, attributable perhaps to the long war of the Reconquest and the endless civil broils which rendered arms the only fitting career for a Spaniard, and accustomed him to see all useful work performed by those whom he regarded as belonging to inferior races—Jews and Mudéjares. Their expulsion was destructive to all industrial pursuits, but the Old Christian still looked down on the descendants of the Conversos who were to a large extent debarred, by the statutes of Limpieza, from the Spanish resource of living without labor by entering the Church or holding office. The evil effects of this were intensified by constitutional indolence. The Spanish Conquistadores gave memorable examples of indefatigable energy and hardihood, sparing no toil when their imaginations were inflamed with the lust of conquest or the hopes of gold, but they would not work as colonists. One of them, Bernardo de Vargas Machuca, who for thirty years was Governor of Margarita, defends the enslavement of the Indians by candidly saying that Spaniards would not settle on unoccupied land, no matter how healthy or how rich in gold and silver, but would go where there were Indians, even if the land were sterile and unhealthy for, if they had not Indians to work for them, they could not enjoy its products, and its possession would be no benefit.[1055] Nor were the Spaniards of whom he speaks gentlemen adventurers, but were mostly drawn from the humbler classes. It was the same at home. Already, in 1512, Guicciardini, who spent two years in Spain as envoy from Florence, describes Spain as a land rich in natural resources, but sparsely populated and largely undeveloped. The people, he says, are warlike and skilled in arms, but they look upon industry and trade with disdain; artisans and husbandmen will work only under pressure of necessity and then rest in idleness until their earnings are spent.[1056] The Córtes of Valladolid, in 1548, complain that agricultural laborers and mechanics would not come to work before 10 or 11 o’clock, and would break off an hour or two before sunset. A century later, Dormer, the historiographer of Aragon, reproves the indolence of the people, except in Catalonia, for they would not work as was customary in other lands, but only a few hours a day, with perhaps frequent intermissions, and they expected this to provide for them as fully as the incessant labor of other lands.[1057]