The dollar, or Duro, of Spain is well known all over the world, being the form under which silver has been generally exported from the Spanish colonies of South America. It is the Italian “Colonato,” so called because the arms of Spain are supported between the two pillars of Hercules. The coinage is slovenly: it is the weight of the metal, not the form, which is looked to by the Spaniard, who, like the Turk, is not so clever a workman or mechanist as devout worshipper of bullion. Ferdinand VII. continued for a long while to strike money with his father’s head, having only had the lettering altered: thus early Trajans exhibit the head of Nero. When the Cortes entered Madrid after the Duke’s victory at Salamanca, they patriotically prohibited the currency of all coins bearing the head of the intrusive Joseph; yet his dollars being chiefly made out of stolen church plate, gilt and ungilt, were, although those of an usurper, intrinsically worth more than the legitimate duro: this was a too severe test for the loyalty of those whose real king and god is cash. Such a decree was worthy of senators who were busier employed in expelling French tropes from their dictionary than French troops from their country. The wiser Chinese take Ferdinand’s and Joseph’s dollars alike, calling them both “devil’s head” money. These bad prejudices against good coin have now given way to the march of intellect; nay, the five-franc piece with Louis-Philippe’s clever head on it bids fair to oust the pillared Duro. The silver of the mines of Murcia is exported to France, where it is coined, and sent back in the manufactured shape. France thus gains a handsome per centage, and habituates the people to her image of power, which comes recommended to them in the most acceptable likeness of current coin.
GOLD COINAGE.
In Spain cash, ambrosial cash, rules the court, the camp, the grove; hence the extraordinary credit of three millions recently required for the secret service expenses of the Tuileries, and official enthusiasm and unanimity secured thereby in the Montpensier purchase. The whole decalogue is condensed at Madrid into one commandment, Love God as represented on earth not by his vicar the Pope, but by his lord-lieutenant, Don Ducat.
"El primero es amar Don Dinero,
Dios es omnipotente, Don Dinero es su lugarteniente."
Thus grandees and men in Spanish offices, both governmental and printing ones, have preferred the other day five-franc pieces to the ribbons of the Legion of honor; nor, considering the swindlers on whom this badge of Austerlitz has been prostituted, were these worthy Castilians much out in their calculations, if there be any truth in the catechism of Falstaff.
AVARICE OF SPANIARDS.
The gold coinage is magnificent, and worthy of the country and period from which Europe was supplied with the precious metals. The largest piece, the ounce, “onza,” is worth sixteen dollars, or about 3l. 6s.; and while it puts to shame the diminutive Napoleons of France and sovereigns of England, tells the tale of Spain’s former wealth, and contrasts strangely with her present poverty and scarcity of specie: these large coins have however been so sweated, not by the sun, but by Jews, foreign and domestic, so clipped worse than Spanish mules or French poodles, that they seldom retain their proper weight and value. They are accordingly looked upon every where with suspicion; a shopkeeper, in a big town, brings out his scales like Shylock, while in a village shrugs, ajos, and negative expressions are your change; nor, even if the natives are satisfied that they are not light, can sixteen dollars be often met with, nor do those who have so much ready money by them ever wish that the fact should be generally known. Spaniards, like the Orientals, have a dread of being supposed to have money in their possession; it exposes them to be plundered by robbers of all kinds, professional or legal; by the “alcalde,” or village authority, and the “escribano,” the attorney, to say nothing of Señor Mon’s tax-gatherer; for the quota of contributions, many of which are apportioned among the inhabitants themselves of each district, falls heaviest on those who have, or are supposed to have, the most ready money.
The lower classes of Spaniards, like the Orientals, are generally avaricious. They see that wealth is safety and power, where everything is venal; the feeling of insecurity makes them eager to invest what they have in a small and easily concealed bulk, “en lo que no habla,” “in that which does not tell tales.” Consequently, and in self-defence, they are much addicted to hoarding. The idea of finding hidden treasures, which prevails in Spain as in the East, is based on some grounds; for in every country which has been much exposed to foreign invasions, civil wars, and domestic misrule, where there were no safe modes of investment, in moments of danger property was converted into gold or jewels and concealed with singular ingenuity. The mistrust which Spaniards entertain of each other often extends, when cash is in the case, even to the nearest relations, to wife and children. Many a treasure is thus lost from the accidental death of the hider, who, dying without a sign, carries his secret to the grave, adding thereby to the sincere grief of his widow and heir. One of the old vulgar superstitions in Spain is an idea that those who were born on a Good Friday, the day of mourning, were gifted with a power of seeing into the earth and of discovering hidden treasures. One place of concealment has always been under the bodies in graves; the hiders have trusted to the dead to defend what the quick could not: this accounts for the universal desecration of tombs and churchyards during Bonaparte’s invasion. The Gauls growled like gowls amid the churchyards; they despoiled the mouldering corpses of the last pledge left by weeping affection; or, as Burke observed of their domestic doings, they unplumbed the dead to make missiles of destruction against the living. These hordes, in their hurried flight before the advancing Duke, also hid much of their ill-gotten gains, which to this day are hunted after. Who has forgotten Borrow’s graphic picture of the treasure-seeking Mol? At this very moment the authorities of San Sebastian are narrowly superintending the diggings of an old Frenchwoman, to whom some dying thief at home has revealed the secret of a buried kettle full of gold ounces.
CONCEALMENT OF CASH.
Having provided the “Spanish,” those metallic sinews of war, which also make the mare go in peace, a prudent master, if he intends to be really the master, will hold the purse himself, and, moreover, will keep a sharp eye on it, for the jingle of coin dispels even a Spanish siesta, and causes many a sleepless day to every listener, from the beggar to the queen mother.