The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic — Volume 3

by William Hickling Prescott

A pragmatic was passed, in 1491, at the petition of the inhabitants of the northern provinces, requiring English and other foreign traders to take their returns in the fruits or merchandise of the country, and not in gold or silver. This law seems to have been designed less to benefit the manufacturer, than to preserve the precious metals in the country. [66] It was the same in purport with other laws prohibiting the exportation of these metals, whether in coin or bullion. They were not new in Spain, nor indeed peculiar to her. [67] They proceeded on the principle that gold and silver, independently of their value as a commercial medium, constituted, in a peculiar sense, the wealth of a country. This error, common, as I have said, to other European nations, was eminently fatal to Spain, since the produce of its native mines before the discovery of America, [68] and of those in that quarter afterwards, formed its great staple. As such, these metals should have enjoyed every facility for transportation to other countries, where their higher value would afford a corresponding profit to the exporter.

The sumptuary laws of Ferdinand and Isabella are open, for the most part, to the same objections with those just noticed. Such laws, prompted in a great degree, no doubt, by the declamations of the clergy against the pomp and vanities of the world, were familiar, in early times, to most European states. There was ample scope for them in Spain, where the example of their Moslem neighbors had done much to infect all classes with a fondness for sumptuous apparel, and a showy magnificence of living. Ferdinand and Isabella fell nothing short of the most zealous of their predecessors, in their efforts to restrain this improvident luxury. They did, however, what few princes on the like occasions have done—enforced the precept by their own example. Some idea of their habitual economy, or rather frugality, may be formed from a remonstrance presented by the commons to Charles the Fifth, soon after his accession, which represents his daily household expenses as amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand maravedies; while those of the Catholic sovereigns were rarely fifteen thousand, or one- tenth of that sum. [69]

They passed several salutary laws for restraining the ambitious expenditure at weddings and funerals, as usual, most affected by those who could least afford it. [70] In 1494, they issued a pragmatic, prohibiting the importation or manufacture of brocades, or of gold or silver embroidery, and also plating with these metals. The avowed object was to check the growth of luxury and the waste of the precious metals. [71]

These provisions had the usual fate of laws of this kind. They gave an artificial and still higher value to the prohibited article. Some evaded them. Others indemnified themselves for the privation, by some other, and scarcely less expensive variety of luxury. Such, for example, were the costly silks, which came into more general use after the conquest of Granada. But here the government, on remonstrance of the cortes, again interposed its prohibition, restricting the privilege of wearing them to certain specified classes. [72] Nothing, obviously, could be more impolitic than these various provisions directed against manufactures, which, under proper encouragement, or indeed without any, from the peculiar advantages afforded by the country, might have formed an important branch of industry, whether for the supply of foreign markets, or for home consumption.

Notwithstanding these ordinances, we find one, in 1500, at the petition of the silk-growers in Granada, against the introduction of silk thread from the kingdom of Naples; [73] thus encouraging the production of the raw material, while they interdicted the uses to which it could be applied. Such are the inconsistencies into which a government is betrayed by an over-zealous and impertinent spirit of legislation!

The chief exports of the country in this reign were the fruits and natural products of the soil, the minerals, of which a great variety was deposited in its bosom, and the simpler manufactures, as sugar, dressed skins, oil, wine, steel, etc. [74] The breed of Spanish horses, celebrated in ancient times, had been greatly improved by the cross with the Arabian. It had, however, of late years fallen into neglect; until the government, by a number of judicious laws, succeeded in restoring it to such repute, that this noble animal became an extensive article of foreign trade. [75] But the chief staple of the country was wool; which, since the introduction of English sheep at the close of the fourteenth century, had reached a degree of fineness and beauty that enabled it, under the present reign, to compete with any other in Europe. [76]

To what extent the finer manufactures were carried, or made an article of export, is uncertain. The vagueness of. statistical information in these early times has given rise to much crude speculation and to extravagant estimates of their resources, which have been met by a corresponding skepticism in later and more scrutinizing critics. Capmany, the most acute of these, has advanced the opinion, that these coarser cloths only were manufactured in Castile, and those exclusively for home consumption. [77] The royal ordinances, however, imply, in the character and minuteness of their regulations, a very considerable proficiency in many of the mechanic arts. [78] Similar testimony is borne by intelligent foreigners, visiting or residing in the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century; who notice the fine cloths and manufacture of arms in Segovia, [79] the silks and velvets of Granada and Valencia, [80] the woollen and silk fabrics of Toledo, which gave employment to ten thousand artisans, [81] and curiously wrought plate of Valladolid, [82] and the fine cutlery and glass manufactures of Barcelona, rivalling those of Venice. [83]

The recurrence of seasons of scarcity, and the fluctuation of prices, might suggest a reasonable distrust of the excellence of the husbandry under this reign. [84] The turbulent condition of the country may account for this pretty fairly during the early part of it. Indeed, a neglect of agriculture, to the extent implied by these circumstances, is wholly irreconcilable with the general tenor of Ferdinand and Isabella's legislation, which evidently relies on this as the main spring of national prosperity. It is equally repugnant, moreover, to the reports of foreigners, who could best compare the state of the country with that of others at the same period. They extol the fruitfulness of a soil, which yielded the products of the most opposite climes; the hills clothed with vineyards and plantations of fruit trees, much more abundant, it would seem, in the northern regions, than at the present day; the valleys and delicious vegas, glowing with the ripe exuberance of southern vegetation; extensive districts, now smitten with the curse of barrenness, where the traveller scarce discerns the vestige of a road or of a human habitation, but which then teemed with all that was requisite to the sustenance of the populous cities in their neighborhood. [85]

The inhabitant of modern Spain or Italy, who wanders amid the ruins of their stately cities, their grass-grown streets, their palaces and temples crumbling into dust, their massive bridges choking up the streams they once proudly traversed, the very streams themselves, which bore navies on their bosoms, shrunk into too shallow a channel for the meanest craft to navigate,—the modern Spaniard who surveys these vestiges of a giant race, the tokens of his nation's present degeneracy, must turn for relief to the prouder and earlier period of her history, when only such great works could have been achieved; and it is no wonder that he should be led, in his enthusiasm, to invest it with a romantic and exaggerated coloring. [86] Such a period in Spain cannot be looked for in the last, still less in the seventeenth century, for the nation had then reached the lowest ebb of its fortunes; [87] nor in the close of the sixteenth, for the desponding language of cortes shows that the work of decay and depopulation had then already begun. [88] It can only be found in the first half of that century, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and that of their successor, Charles the Fifth; in which last, the state, under the strong impulse it had received, was carried onward in the career of prosperity, in spite of the ignorance and mismanagement of those who guided it.

There is no country which has been guilty of such wild experiments, or has showed, on the whole, such profound ignorance of the true principles of economical science, as Spain under the sceptre of the family of Austria. And, as it is not always easy to discriminate between their acts and those of Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circumstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws, mischievous in their eventual operation, were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add, that what was intrinsically bad, has been aggravated ten fold under the blind legislation of their successors. [89] It is also true, that many of the most exceptionable laws sanctioned by their names, are to be charged on their predecessors, who had ingrafted their principles into the system long before; [90] and many others are to be vindicated by the general practice of other nations, which authorized retaliation on the score of self-defence. [91]