QUESTION OF SUCCESSION
The death of Queen Amalia, May 17, 1829, was an abundant source of intrigue, for a fourth marriage of Fernando might prove fruitful and thus destroy the prospects of Don Carlos. The efforts of the Carlists to prevent it were vain and, on December 9th, Fernando married his neice, the Neapolitan princess, María Cristina de Bourbon, whose sister Carlotta was the wife of the Infante Francisco de Paula, the second brother of Fernando. There was soon prospect of an heir to the throne, and the uncertainty as to sex rendered it advisable to determine in advance whether the Salic law excluding females from the succession was in force or not. The ancient Spanish law, as expressed in the Partidas, provided for the succession of a daughter in the absence of sons or of children of a son.[1018]Under this, Spain had seen the glorious reign of Isabella the Catholic and the unfortunate one of Juanala Loca, and female succession, in default of male children, was firmly established in the tradition of the nation until 1713, when María Luisa of Savoy persuaded her husband Philip V to effect a change. Much pressure was required to bring this about, but a pragmática, agreed to by the Córtes, provided that only in the event of the total default of male representatives should the daughters of the last reigning sovereign succeed, according to age, and all laws to the contrary were annulled.[1019]
In 1784 there was talk of revoking this pragmática, but it was postponed until after the accession of Carlos IV, when the Córtes of 1789 petitioned for the revival of the law of the Partidas. The king assented but, to avoid giving offence to reigning houses whose possible claims to the succession were thus cut off, it was kept a profound secret, although filed away in the archives.[1020]This was the position when Fernando, to assure the succession to a possible daughter, by a pragmática of March 29, 1830, ordered that of 1789 to be published and commanded the literal observance of the law of the Partidas.[1021]The proceedings of 1789 were freely denounced as fraudulent by the Carlists, they were confident in the support of two hundred thousand Royalist Volunteers, and they regarded the new pragmática as a reason for more energetic organization.
In due time, on October 10th, a girl was born, known to history as Isabel II. Carlos believed that his rights had been sacrificed and, though he refused to snatch at the sceptre during his brother’s life-time, he assured his partizans that he would not permit his neice to mount the throne. Fernando’s health was rapidly giving way under repeated attacks of gout and, on September 17, 1832, his life was despaired of. The prospect was most critical. Propositions were made to Carlos about sharing the government, but he declared that conscience and honor would not permit him to abandon rights given to him at his birth by God. In the perplexity of the situation, Calomarde, who for ten years had been the king’s most trusted minister, represented to Cristina the terrors of the inevitable civil war, and the dangers to herself and her children, for she had recently given birth to a second daughter, MaríaLuisa Fernanda. She yielded, Fernando assented and signed a paper annulling the pragmática of 1830, which was read to the assembled ministers on the night of September 18th, under the strictest injunctions of secrecy, but it was treacherously divulged, and copies were posted about the court. Cristina’s servants commenced packing her effects for departure and Carlos, in his apartments, was saluted as king.
Fernando however commenced to rally; many nobles offered their lives to Cristina and formed an association to defend the claims of Isabel. Carlotta, who was in Andalusia, hastened to Madrid, reaching it on the 22d and, being of a determined character scolded Cristina and threatened Calomarde—it is even said that she cuffed him in the face, when with ready wit he quoted Calderon—“White hands inflict no disgrace.” Fernando agreed to recall the decree, when she obtained the original and the copies and destroyed them. This only led the followers of Carlos to prepare to assert his claims by force, and there was no time to be lost in organizing a party to resist them.[1022]
This necessitated a reversal of the policy of the last ten years, identified with Calomarde—in fact the period was often designated as theEpocha de Calomarde. The ministry was dismissed; Calomarde was banished to his native place, and then was ordered to the citadel of Minorca, but he was concealed in a convent from which he escaped to France. Fernando, on October 6th signed a decree constituting Cristina regent during his illness; the next day she issued a general pardon of all political prisoners and, on the 15th, a general amnesty, including the exiles who were allowed to return, the only exceptions being those who at Seville had voted to replace the king with a regency, and those who had commanded bodies of troops against him, all of whom Fernando obstinately refused to pardon. This complete reversal of policy led to some premature insurrectionary movements by the Carlists, but they were easily suppressed.[1023]
ISABELLA RECOGNIZED
The declaration of September 18th had been destroyed, but it had not been invalidated. To effect this in the most impressive manner an assembly was held on December 31st of all the great officers of the Government, representatives of the grandees, and deputations of the provinces, in which Fernando presented aholograph paper setting forth that advantage had been taken of his desperate illness to threaten him with civil war and induce him to sign a revocation of the pragmatic sanction of March 29, 1830; now, convinced of his inability to alter the immemorial customs of the land, he pronounced the nullity of the declaration which had been snatched from him by surprise. Then he signed and rubricated the paper, all present were asked whether they had understood its purport, and the next day, January 1, 1833, the proceedings of the Córtes of 1789 and their confirmation by Carlos IV were published.[1024]
The next step was the assembling of Córtes to take the oath of allegiance to Isabel, and for this summons were issued April 4th appointing June 20th. Carlos was got out of the way by inducing Dom Miguel of Portugal to invite him, but, when Fernando desired to remove him still further to Italy, a long and very curious correspondence ensued between the brothers, couched in the most affectionate terms, in which Carlos evaded obedience. He was the only absent member of the royal family when the Córtes met, where all, including bishops, grandees, nobles and the procuratorsof the cities duly took the oath of allegiance. The whole kingdom followed the example, and the Biscayans, under the historic Oak of Guarnica, spontaneously recognized Isabel as the heiress of Biscay. Yet sparks of rebellion manifested themselves in one place after another, and there were symptoms of insubordination in the army, showing that the Carlist organization was at work and was awaiting only the death of Fernando.[1025]
By the beginning of September he was scarce more than a living corpse and on the 29th the end came. The obsequies were held on October 3d, the leaden coffin having a glass plate through which the face could be seen and verified. The Duke of Alagon, as captain of the body-guard, commanded silence and, in a loud voice exclaimed Señor! Señor! Señor! As there was no reply, he added “Since his majesty does not answer, he is truly dead.” Despite the leaden coffin, the stench was such that several persons fainted.[1026]It might be said that his malignant influence lasted until the grave covered him—or, perhaps, the truth is more fully expressed by Benito Pérez Galdos: “That king, who deceived his parents, his masters, his friends, his ministers, his partizans, his enemies, his four wives, his people, his allies, all the world in fact, deceived also death, who thought to make us happy in delivering us from such a devil, for he left us his brother and his daughter, who kindled a fearful war, and the legacy of misery and scandal is yet unexhausted.”[1027]
DEFINITE EXTINCTION
It is not our province to enter into the horrors of the savage Carlist war, which broke out forthwith and lasted until the Convenio de Vergara in 1839. The rapid sketch which we have given of its antecedents suffices to show how Cristina, in order to make head against the extremists, was perforce obliged to consolidate a party composed of the moderate Royalists and the Liberals, while the progress of events threw her more and more into the arms of the latter. The solemn proclamation of Isabel’s succession, October 20th, was accompanied by measures restricting the oppressive powers of the Royalist Volunteers, restoring the laws respecting mayorazgos and other reforms of the Constitutional period. That this process, once begun, should continue with accelerated momentum was inevitable, and also that it should sweep asidethe poor remnants of the Inquisition. This was so much a matter of course and, in the comatose condition of the institution, was of importance so slender, that the memoir writers and historians of the period, if they allude to it at all, do so in the briefest and most perfunctory manner. Yet the profound roots which it had struck in the national life, and the hold which it had acquired on popular veneration, are manifested in the fact that the struggle for its extinction had extended over a period of more than twenty years, and required for its consummation a change in the ideals of a majority of the people. The time for this had at last come, and the final dissolution was accomplished with only so much of discussion as to show that the opinions of those called upon to decide were virtually unanimous in principle and only different as to the opportuneness of the measure.
At a meeting of the Consejo de Gobierno, July 9, 1834, there was submitted the project of a decree for the extinction of the Inquisition and the disposition of its property. This was considered, July 11th, when the majority, consisting of the Archbishop of Mexico, the Duke of Bailen, the Marquis of las Amarillas and Don José María Puig, approved of the decree, with some unessential modifications. The minority, consisting of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the Duke of Medinaceli and Don Francisco Xavier Caro, opposed the article extinguishing the Inquisition, on the ground that it was already extinguished, matters of faith were treated in the episcopal tribunals, and it was inopportune to call public attention to an affair which all the world regarded as settled, while the application of the property ought to be submitted to the approaching Córtes. At the next meeting, held July 13th, a dictamen was adopted, embodying the views of the majority and suggesting certain amendments, of no special moment in principle, which were virtually accepted by the Regency.[1028]No time was lost in making the final draft, which was published July 15th. The preamble recited the desire of the Regency to strengthen the public credit in all ways compatible with justice; that the late king had considered the imprescriptible episcopal jurisdiction and the laws of the land sufficient for the protection of religion; thata decree of January 4, 1834, had committed to the bishops censorship over writings on religion, morals and discipline; that the labors on the criminal code, now completed, established appropriate penalties for assaults on religion, and that theJunta eclesiastica, created by decree of April 22d, was occupied with proposing what was deemed necessary to this end. Therefore the Regent, in order to provide a remedy, in so far as the Real Patronato extended and with the concurrence of the Holy See, as far as this was necessary, after consulting the Council of Government and the ministers, decreed—
Art. I. The tribunal of the Inquisition is declared to be definitely suppressed.
Art. II. Its property is appropriated to the extinction of the public debt.
Art. III. The one hundred and one canonries annexed to the Inquisition are applied to the same object, subject to the royal decree of March 9th last, and for the time expressed in the Apostolic bulls.
Art. IV. The employees who possess prebends or obtain salaried civil offices will have no claim on the funds of the Tribunal.
Art. V. The other employees will receive from the sinking fund the exact salaries corresponding to the classification which they will establish with the Junta eclesiastica.[1029]
Such was the brief and decisive decree which terminated the existence of the institution created by the piety of Isabella and the fanaticism of Torquemada.
VICISSITUDES OF TOLERATION
There still remained the juntas de fe of the bishops, some, at least, of whom persisted in maintaining them, with the old inquisitorial methods, in spite of the constitution of Pius VIII and the royal decree of February 6, 1830. Their continuance was incompatible with the rapidly increasing anticlerical spirit of the dominant party, and they were prohibited by a decree of July 1, 1835, in which, after alluding to the disregard of the papal and royal utterances, Cristina ordered that they should cease immediately wherever they had been established. The ordinary episcopal courts were required to observe the law of the Partidas, the canons and the common law in all cases of faith and others, of which theextinguished Inquisition had had cognizance, conforming their procedure to that in other ecclesiastical matters and admitting the appeals allowed by law. Cases of solicitation were provided for by a clause providing that, where scandal or offence to morals might ensue, a prudent secrecy should be observed, the hearings to be held with closed doors, in the presence of the accused and his counsel, from whom nothing was to be withheld.[1030]Thus the last trace of inquisitorial procedure was forbidden on Spanish soil.
After so many centuries of conscientious intolerance, the lesson of toleration was hard to learn. On August 14, 1836, theMotin de la Granjaforced Cristina to proclaim once more the Constitution of 1812, with its prohibition of any religion save Roman Catholicism. This instrument, with all its crudities, was soon found to be unworkable, and the Constitution of 1837 marked an advance, in its simple declaration that the State obligated itself to maintain the cult and ministers of the Catholic religion, which was that of Spaniards. Then came a reaction and, when the Constitution was revised in 1845, the principle of intolerance was reaffirmed. The European disturbances of 1848 strengthened this spirit in the Church, and it found expression in the penal code of 1851, of which Articles, 128, 129, 130 and 131 inflict imprisonment and exile for any attempt to change the religion of Spain, for public worship in other faiths, for apostatizing from Catholicism, or for publishing doctrines in opposition to it.[1031]The Spanish bishops were even encouraged to call for the revival of the Inquisition under their management, but this would have been superfluous.[1032]That the law was quite sufficient for the repression of Protestant propaganda was shown, in 1855 by the long imprisonment and exile of Francisco Ruet at Barcelona. It is true that in 1856, during the brief return of the Liberals to power, a Constitution on a more tolerant basis was framed, but a speedy reaction prevented this from going into effect, and the instrument of 1845 remained in force until the revolution of 1868. Ruet’s chief disciple was Manuel Matamoros, who made numerous converts in Málaga, Granada and Seville, but, in 1860, prosecution caused to fly to Barcelona, where he was thrown in gaol and takenback to Granada. Some twenty more were arrested, among whom were his two principal aids José Alhama and Trigo. Matamoros and Alhama were condemned to eight years of presidio and Trigo to four, while similar sentences were pronounced in Seville on Tomas Bordallo and Diego Mesa Santaello. The affair made a sensation throughout Europe; the Evangelical Alliance bestirred itself and a deputation representing nearly every nation assembled in Madrid to intercede for the convicts. The pressure was so great that, on May 20, 1862, the sentence rendered three weeks before was commuted to nine years’ of exile, which enabled the Evangelicals, from the safe refuge of Gibraltar, to maintain relations with their secret converts.[1033]That under this reaction the resuscitation of the Inquisition was seriously considered, may be assumed from the publication, in 1859, of a pamphlet containing the speech of Ostolaza, in the Córtes of Cádiz, in favor of the Inquisition, and those of Muñoz Torrero and Toreno against it, with the manifesto of the Córtes, thus contributing to the debate, under the guise of impartiality, the weight of argument against the Holy Office.[1034]
When came the revolution of 1868, the Constituent Córtes, after a vigorous debate, affirmed, May 8, 1869, the principle of religious liberty by the decisive vote of 163 to 40. In the new Constitution, proclaimed June 6th, the free exercise, public and private, of faiths other than Catholicism was guaranteed both to foreigners and Spaniards.[1035]Under this theCódigo penal reformado, which is still in force, provides penalties of fine and imprisonment for any interference with religious belief, whether by constraint to acts of worship or impeding those of the individual’s chosen faith.[1036]Finally, in 1876, still another Constitution, which has endured to the present time, after declaring Roman Catholicism to be the religion of the State, prohibits the molestation of any one for religious opinion or for the exercise of his cult, in so far as Christian morals are respected, but it does not permit public ceremonies other than those of the State religion.[1037]
VICISSITUDES OF TOLERATION
This summary of the vicissitudes in the progress of toleration, since the suppression of the Inquisition, is not foreign to our subject, for it teaches two lessons. One is that the main assaults on the ecclesiastical system of Spain, its members and its temporalities, were committed before toleration was extended to the heretic, for the secularization of church property, the abrogation of tithes and first fruits and the suppression of the regular Orders were chiefly effected by measures adopted between 1835 and 1855. The other is that the slender results of Protestant propagandism, from the days of George Borrow to those of Pastor Fliedner, show how little Catholicism has to fear from such efforts among a people who, if they abandon the faith of their fathers, are much more apt to seek refuge in negation of religion than in heresy. Together they demonstrate that the terrors of the Inquisition were superfluous, and that the injuries which it inflicted on Spain were not compensated by any corresponding benefits, even from the stand-point of the Church.
PRESENT CONDITION
NOmodern European nation has endured such vicissitudes of good and evil fortune as the Spanish. From the virtual anarchy of the Castilian kingdoms under Juan II and Enrique IV, the resolute wills of Ferdinand and Isabella evoked order and, by the union with Aragon, the conquest of Granada, Naples and Navarre and the acquisition of the New World, they left Spain in a most commanding position. When, under Charles V, to this were added the Netherlands, the Austrian possessions, Milan and the headship of the Holy Roman Empire, the hegemony of Europe was secured, and the prospect of attaining the universal monarchy seemed sufficiently possible to arouse the fears of Europe. The loss of the Empire and of Austria, awarded to the younger branch of the Hapsburgs, strengthened rather than weakened the inheritance of Philip II, by rendering it less cumbrous and unwieldy, while the acquisition of Portugal unified the Peninsula and the increasing wealth of the Indies promised almost unlimited resources for the extension of his power. Yet this power, so colossal in outward seeming, was already becoming a mere shell, covering emptiness and poverty, for its rulers had exhausted the nation in enterprises beyond its strength and foreign to its interests. Throughout the seventeenth century its downward progress was rapid until, at the death of Carlos II, in 1700, it had reached a depth of misery and helplessness in which it might almost despair of recuperation. Yet its efforts, in the War of Succession, showed that it still possessed a virile nationality; its decadence was arrested, and a slow upward progress was begun, accelerated under the enlightened rule of Carlos III, until, at his death in 1788, it had so far regained its position that, if not yet a power of the first rank, it might not unhopefully look forward to attaining that position. Then followed the weak and disastrous reign of Carlos IV, under the guidance of Godoy, when impotence invited the intrusion of Napoleon, resulting in the manifestation of national energy, which surprised the world in the heroic War of Liberation. After theRestoration in 1814, the land was, for more than half a century the scene of almost unintermittent conflict between antagonistic forces, resulting in the apathy of exhaustion after attaining the form of democratic constitutional monarchy. Yet we are told that absolute monarchy has merely been replaced by absoluteCaciquismoor, in American parlance, the rule of the political “boss.”[1038]Government, it seems, is exploited purely for the private interest of the office-holding class and the strength of the nation has been wasted, its development has been neglected, until the unexpected feebleness revealed in the war of 1898 led earnest patriots to declare that, if the existing maladministration were to continue, it would be better to seek shelter under England or France, and to put an end to the history of Spain as an independent nation.[1039]This shock to the national consciousness, and the skilful and vigorous agitation to which it gave birth, bear promise of results in the political as well as in the material and industrial development of the land, and we may reasonably hope that a nation, which has suffered so much with fortitude, is entering upon a new career that may make amends for the miseries of the past.
Vicissitudes such as these have their causes, and we cannot conclude this long history of the Inquisition without inquiring what share it and the spirit, which at once created and was stimulated by it, contributed to the misfortunes endured, with few intermissions, by the Spanish people since its organization. These causes are numerous, many of them not directly connected with our subject, but yet to be enumerated in order that undue importance may not be ascribed to the influence of the Inquisition.
To begin with, the Spanish monarchy developed into a pure despotism, based on the maxim of the Institutes—quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem—the prince’s pleasure has the force of law. All legislative and executive functions were concentratedin the crown; the king issued laws, levied taxes, raised troops, declared war, made peace at his will, and the execution of the Justicia Lanuza, in 1591, without a trial, shows that the lives of his subjects were at his disposal. It was the same with their liberties, as illustrated by the imprisonment, without a hearing, of ministers like Cabarrús, Floridablanca, Jovellanos and Urquijo. For awhile the ancient fueros of the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon served as some restraint in those territories, but Philip V, in 1707 and 1714, took advantage of the War of Succession to declare them forfeited. Under such concentration of authority, the fate of the nation depended on the character and capacity of the monarch. Charles V had unquestioned ability, but his ambitious enterprises, while flattering to the national vanity, not only exhausted the resources of Spain, in quarrels foreign to its interests, but crippled its prosperity by the reckless devices employed to supply his needs. Philip II was a man of very moderate talents, irresolute and procrastinating to that degree that the Venetian envoy Vendramino, in 1595, declared that what would cost another prince ten ducats cost him a hundred, in consequence of his dilatoriness.[1040]His enormous and disjointed empire was too much for his narrow intelligence, and his vast expenditures in defence of Latin Christianity consumed all his resources and kept him in perpetual financial straits. At his death, in 1598, he had nothing to show for the ruin of his country but the gloomy pile of the Escorial and the acquisition of Portugal. Holland was hopelessly lost; his rival, Henry IV, was firmly seated on the throne of a reunited France, and the papacy was alienated. The internal condition of the land is depicted in the despairing complaints of the Córtes of 1594—“The truth, which cannot be questioned, is that the kingdom is totally exhausted. Scarce any man has money or credit, and those who have it do not employ it in trade or for profit, but hoard it to live as sparingly as possible, in hope that it may last them to the end. Thus comes the universal poverty of all classes.... There is not a city or a town but has lost largely in population, as is seen by the multitude of closed and empty houses, and the fall in the rents of the few that are inhabited.”[1041]
GOVERNMENT BY FAVORITES
With Philip III we commence the long line of favorites whodominated Spain during the seventeenth century. Well meaning, but weak and incapable, he left everything to the Duke of Lerma, under whose guidance a reckless course of prodigality was followed as though the only trouble was to get rid of surplus revenues. Charles V had cast aside the severe simplicity of the old Castilian court for the stately magnificence of the Burgundian household; his successors followed his example, in spite of the remonstrances of the Córtes, but where Philip II spent on it four hundred thousand ducats a year, Philip III lavished a million and three hundred thousand, while he was begging money of his nobles and prelates and seeking to seize all the plate in the kingdom in order to coin it. He was not alone in this, for the nobility and gentry were consumed with usury and overwhelmed with debt, owing to their extravagance. The Venetian envoy Contarini, in 1605 describes the land as overspread with poverty and general discontent and all the evils attendant upon a corrupt and vicious government, under an indolent king and a rapacious and incapable minister. The worst war, he concludes, that could be made on Spain was to allow it to consume itself in peace under misgovernment, while to attack it would be to arouse the dogged determination of the people. The reports of the Lucchese envoys tell the same story.[1042]Such was the condition when the expulsion of the Moriscos robbed the land of its most productive class.
Matters grew worse when Philip IV ascended the throne, in 1621. Good-natured, affable, indolent and pleasure-loving, his thirty-one unacknowledged natural children, besides the acknowledged one—the second Don John of Austria—serve to explain why he abandoned the cares of state to his favorite, the Count-Duke Olivares, after whose fall in 1643 his nephew, Don Luis de Haro, succeeded to the post. The official historiographer describes Spain, at his accession, as being in extremity, and the people crushed under their burdens; everything was in disorder, and the condition of the nation so weakened that it could only be deplored and not amended. Yet Philip’s first act was to break the truce with Holland and, from that time to the end of his long reign, he was involved in almost continual war. He called together the Córtes and asked for supplies to which they replied by petitioning him to try to stop the general depopulation andfind occupation for the people, who were wandering with their families over the country in vain search for work.[1043]Yet Philip, engrossed with his plebeian amours and the pleasures of his court, continued his wars and his extravagance, without giving thought to the misery of his people whom he was crushing with ever new exactions. The courtly festivities were conducted with a magnificence till then unexampled; the carnival festival of 1637 was officially admitted to cost three hundred thousand ducats and was popularly estimated at half a million.[1044]In 1658 the Venetian envoy reports his giving to the son of Don Luis de Haro fifty thousand pesos for skilfully arranging a ballet for the ladies of the court. Every bull-fight cost him sixty thousand reales, and the celebration at the birth of Prince Prosper (who speedily died) involved an expenditure of eight hundred thousand pesos. All this, as the envoy remarks, was extracted from the blood of the miserable people, who were poorer in Spain than anywhere else. The immense resources of the kingdom were absorbed by the rapacity of the ministers or were dissipated by the profuseness of the king.[1045]
RESOURCES AND POSSIBILITIES
In 1665, Carlos II, then but four years of age, succeeded to his father, under the regency of the Queen-dowager Maria Ana of Austria. We have seen how she abandoned affairs to her confessor, the Jesuit Nithard, and when he was dismissed by the efforts of Don John of Austria, in 1669, she replaced him with the worthless favorite Fernando de Valenzuela. Again Don John was called in; Valenzuela was exiled to the Philippines and Don John assumed the reins of government. His limited abilities were unequal to the task; he was driven from power and died soon afterwards in 1679. Carlos had been declared of age in 1675; he was utterly incapable and, though he can scarce be said to have had favorites, under such ministers as the Duke of Medinaceli and the Count of Oropesa, Spain sank deeper in misery and degradation until his death in 1700. The kingdom was reduced to the last extremity, without money, without industry, without means of defence to resist the aggressive wars of Louis XIV, or to defend the colonies from the ravages of buccaneers. The population is said to have shrunk to 5,000,000; in 1586 it had been estimatedat 8,000,000 by the Venetian envoy Gradenigo.[1046]Such was the result of two centuries of absolute government, under monarchs not wilfully evil, who merely reigned according to the light vouchsafed them.
Yet it was not so much the extravagance of the court, or the perpetual wars of the Hapsburgs, or the emigration to the colonies, that reduced the population and the power of Spain. The land could have endured all these if its rich resources and vast opportunities had been wisely developed. Lying between two seas and holding Sicily and Naples, it commanded the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; with its wealthy colonies, the source of the precious metals which revolutionized the finances of Europe and furnished the basis for the most profitable commerce that the world had seen, it was invited to become the greatest of maritime states, with a navy and a mercantile marine beyond rivalry, dominating the seas as the Catalans had dominated the Mediterranean in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was largely secured from hostile aggression by the Pyrenees, and could work out its destinies with little to fear from external enemies. It is true that much of its surface is mountainous, and that large districts suffer from insufficient precipitation, but the Moors had shown what wonders could be wrought by irrigation, and how, by patient labor, even mountain sides could be made to yield their increase. No land could boast a greater variety of agricultural products, including those of semi-tropical and temperate zones which, combined with mineral wealth, should have rendered it self-supporting. All that was needed was steady and intelligent industry, fostered by wise legislation, encouraging production and commerce, and enabling every man to work out his own career with as few artificial impediments as possible, and Spain might be today what she was in the sixteenth century, the leader among civilized nations.
This was not to be. The fatal gift of the Burgundian inheritance distracted the attention of her rulers from the true arena of her expansion in Africa and on the ocean, to distant enterprises wholly foreign to her true interests, while the undeviating determination to enforce unity of faith at home, and to combat heresy elsewhere, led her to drive out her most useful population, and involved her in ruinous expenditures abroad. To extort the means for the furtherance of this policy, industry was strangled with the mostburdensome and complicated system of taxation that human folly could devise, the weight of which fell almost exclusively on the oppressed producing classes, who were least able to endure it, while the nobles and gentry and clergy, who held by far the larger portion of Spanish wealth, were exempt.[1047]As taxation was virtually at the discretion of the monarch, imposts were added as the exigencies of extravagance demanded, usually with little thought as to their consequences, until the taxpayer was entangled in a network which crippled him at every step. This moreover was accompanied with regulations to prevent evasions, and to protect the consumer at the expense of the producer, which greatly enhanced the deadly influence of the anomalous and incongruous accumulation of exactions.
OPPRESSIVE TAXATION
All this fell with peculiar weight on agriculture and on thelabradoresor 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 conspiredto 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, forthere 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 merecaminos 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 themiserable 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 theMesta, 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 unalterabletassa, and amesteñotenant 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 thetrashumantes—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 thedespobladosandbaldíos—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, thebaldíosamounted 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 thenuevas poblaciones, and how the promising experiment was checked by the Inquisition.