Ferdinand openly assumed for himself and his ministers the responsibility of maintaining this vicious institution, and subsequently issued an ordinance to that effect, accompanied, however, by a variety of humane and equitable regulations for restraining its abuse. The license was embraced in its full extent; the regulations were openly disregarded. Several years after, in 1515, Las Casas,[r] moved by the spectacle of human suffering, returned to Spain, and pleaded the cause of the injured natives, in tones which made the dying monarch tremble on his throne. It was too late, however, for the king to execute the remedial measures he contemplated. The efficient interference of Ximenes, who sent a commission for the purpose to Hispaniola, was attended with no permanent results. And the indefatigable “protector of the Indians” was left to sue for redress at the court of Charles, and to furnish a splendid if not a solitary example there of a bosom penetrated with the true spirit of Christian philanthropy.
The supply of precious metals yielded by the colonies proved eventually far greater than had ever entered into the conception of the most sanguine of the early discoverers. Their prolific soil and genial climate, moreover, afforded an infinite variety of vegetable products, which might have furnished an unlimited commerce with the mother-country. Under a judicious protection, their population and productions, steadily increasing, would have enlarged to an incalculable extent the general resources of the empire. Such, indeed, might have been the result of a wise system of legislation.
But the true principles of colonial policy were sadly misunderstood in the sixteenth century. The discovery of a world was estimated, like that of a rich mine, by the value of its returns in gold and silver. Much of Isabella’s legislation, it is true, is of that comprehensive character which shows that she looked to higher and far nobler objects. But with much that is good there was mingled, as in most of her institutions, one germ of evil, of little moment at the time, indeed, but which, under the vicious culture of her successors, shot up to a height that overshadowed and blighted all the rest. This was the spirit of restriction and monopoly, aggravated by the subsequent laws of Ferdinand, and carried to an extent under the Austrian dynasty that paralysed colonial trade.
Under their most ingeniously perverse system of laws, the interests of both the parent country and the colonies were sacrificed. The latter, condemned to look for supplies to an incompetent source, were miserably dwarfed in their growth; while the former contrived to convert the nutriment which she extorted from the colonies into a fatal poison. The streams of wealth which flowed in from the silver quarries of Zacatecas and Potosí were jealously locked up within the limits of the peninsula. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, every branch of national industry and improvement, languished and fell to decay; and the nation, like the Phrygian monarch, who turned all that he touched to gold, cursed by the very consummation of its wishes, was poor in the midst of its treasures.[75]
THE GOLDEN AGE OF SPAIN
[1474-1516 A.D.]
From this sad picture let us turn to that presented by the period of our history when, the clouds and darkness having passed away, a new morn seemed to break upon the nation. Under the firm but temperate sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great changes we have noticed were effected without convulsion in the state. On the contrary, the elements of the social system, which before jarred so discordantly, were brought into harmonious action. The restless spirit of the nobles was turned from civil faction to the honourable career of public service, whether in arms or letters. The people at large, assured of the security of private rights, were occupied with the different branches of productive labour. Trade, as is abundantly shown by the legislation of the period, had not yet fallen into the discredit which attached to it in later times. The precious metals, instead of flowing in so abundantly as to palsy the arm of industry, served only to stimulate it.
The foreign intercourse of the country was every day more widely extended. Her agents and consuls were to be found in all the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The Spanish mariner, instead of creeping along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly across the great western ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land-trade with India into a sea-trade; and the nations of the peninsula, who had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became the factors and carriers of Europe.
The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities, the revenues of which, augmented in all to a surprising extent, had in some increased forty and even fifty fold beyond what they were at the commencement of the reign: the ancient and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling, industrious traders; Valladolid, sending forth its thirty thousand warriors from its gates, where the whole population now scarcely reaches two-thirds of that number; Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Granada, naturalising in Europe the arts and luxuries of the East; Saragossa, “the abundant,” as she was called from her fruitful territory; Valencia, “the beautiful”; Barcelona, rivalling in independence and maritime enterprise the proudest of the Italian republics; Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already the great mart for the commercial exchanges of the peninsula; and Seville, the golden gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe.
The resources of the inhabitants were displayed in the palaces and public edifices, fountains, aqueducts, gardens, and other works of utility and ornament. This lavish expenditure was directed by an improved taste. Architecture was studied on purer principles than before, and, with the sister arts of design, showed the influence of the new connection with Italy in the first gleams of that excellence which shed such lustre over the Spanish school at the close of the century. A still more decided impulse was given to letters. Ancient seminaries were remodeled; new ones were created. Barcelona, Salamanca, and Alcalá, whose cloistered solitudes are now the grave rather than the nursery of science, then swarmed with thousands of disciples, who under the generous patronage of the government found letters the surest path to preferment. Even the lighter branches of literature felt the revolutionary spirit of the times, and, after yielding the last fruits of the ancient system, displayed new and more beautiful varieties under the influence of Italian culture.