Spain sought to preserve the dependence of her American possessions by the studied promotion of disunion among her subjects. The Spaniard who went out from the mother country was taught to stand apart from the Spaniard who had been born in the colonies. To the former nearly all official positions were assigned. The dependencies were governed by Old Spaniards; all lucrative offices in the Church were occupied by the same class. They looked with some measure of contempt upon Spaniards who were not born in Spain; and they were requited with the jealousy and dislike of their injured brethren. There were laws carefully framed to hold the negro and the Indian races apart from each other. The unwise Sovereigns of Spain regarded with approval the deep alienations which their policy created, and rejoiced to have rendered impossible any extensive combination against their authority.
The supreme desire which animated Spain in all her dealings with her colonies was the acquisition of gold and silver, and there fell on her in a short time the curse of granted prayers. The foundations of her colonial history were laid in a destruction of innocent human life wholly without parallel; influences originating with the colonies hastened the decline of her power and the debasement of her people. But gold and silver were gained in amounts of which the world had never dreamed before. The mines of Hispaniola were speedily exhausted and abandoned. But soon after the conquest the vast mineral wealth of Peru was disclosed. An Indian hurrying up a mountain in pursuit of a strayed llama, caught hold of a bush to save himself from falling. The bush yielded to his grasp, and he found attached to its roots a mass of silver. All around, the mountains were rich in silver. The rumoured wealth of Potosi attracted multitudes of the adventurous and the poor, and the lonely mountain became quickly the home of a large population. A city which numbered ultimately one hundred and fifty thousand souls arose at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet above sea-level: several thousand mines were opened by the eager crowds who hastened to the spot. A little later the yet more wonderful opulence of Mexico was discovered. During the whole period of Spanish dominion over the New World the production of the precious metals, especially of silver, continued to increase, until at length it reached the large annual aggregate of ten million sterling. Two centuries and a half passed in the interval between the discovery of the Western mines and the overthrow of Spanish authority. During that period there was drawn from the mines of the New World a value of fifteen hundred or two thousand million sterling.
When this flood of wealth began to pour in upon the country, Spain stood at the highest pitch of her strength. The divisions which for many centuries had enfeebled her were now removed, and Spain was united under one strong monarchy. Her people, trained for many generations in perpetual war with their Moorish invaders, were robust, patient, enduring, regardless of danger. Their industrial condition was scarcely inferior to that of any country in Europe. Barcelona produced manufactures of steel and glass which rivalled those of Venice. The looms of Toledo, occupied with silk and woollen fabrics, gave employment to ten thousand workmen; Granada and Valencia sent forth silks and velvets; Segovia manufactured arms and fine cloths; around Seville, while she was still the only port of shipment for the New World, there were sixteen thousand looms. So active was the demand which Spanish manufacturers enjoyed, that at one time the orders held by them could not have been executed under a period of six years. Spain had a thousand merchant ships—certainly the largest mercantile marine in Europe. Her soil was carefully cultivated, and many districts which are now arid and barren wastes yielded then luxuriant harvests.
But Spain proved herself unworthy of the unparalleled opportunities which had been granted to her. Her Kings turned the national attention to military glory, and consumed the lives and the substance of the people in aggressive wars upon neighbouring States. Her Church suppressed freedom of thought, and thus, step by step, weakened and debased the national intellect. 1492 A.D. The Jews were expelled from Spain, and the country never recovered from the wound which the loss of her most industrious citizens inflicted. The easily-gained treasure of the New World fired the minds of the people with a restless ambition, which did not harmonize with patient industry. The waste of life in war, and the eager rush to the marvellous gold-fields of America, left Spain insufficiently supplied with population to maintain the industrial position which she had reached. Her manufactures began to decay, until early in the seventeenth century the sixteen thousand looms of Seville had sunk to four hundred. Agriculture shared the fall of the sister industries; and ere long Spain was able with difficulty to support her own diminished population. Her navy, once the terror of Europe, was ruined. Her merchant ships became the prey of enemies whose strength had grown as hers had decayed. The traders of England and Holland, setting at defiance the laws which she was no longer able to enforce, supplied her colonies with manufactures which she in her decline was no longer able to produce.
The North American possessions of England became an inestimable blessing to England and to the human family, because they were the slow gains of patient industry. Their ownership was secured not by the sword, but by the plough. Nothing was done for them by fortune; the history of their growth is a record of labour, undismayed, unwearied, incessant. Every new settler, every acre redeemed from the wilderness, contributed to the vast aggregate of wealth and power which has been built up slowly, but upon foundations which are indestructible.
The success of Spain was the demoralizing success of the fortunate gambler. Within the lifetime of a single generation ten or twelve million of Spaniards came into possession of advantages such as had never before been bestowed upon any people. A vast region, ten times larger than their own country, glowing with the opulence of tropical vegetation, fell easily into their hands. Products of field and of forest which were eagerly desired in Europe were at their call in boundless quantity. A constant and lucrative market was opened for their own productions. Millions of submissive labourers spared them the necessity of personal effort. All that nations strive for as their chief good—territorial greatness, power, wealth, ample scope for commercial enterprise—became suddenly the coveted possession of Spain. But these splendours served only to illustrate her incapacity, to hasten her ruin, to shed a light by which the world could watch her swift descent to the nether gloom of idleness, depopulation, insolvency, contempt.