Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/506

478 478 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. PART II. Colonial ad- ministration. mother country. Under a judicious protection, their population and productions, steadily increas- ing, 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, aggra- vated by the subsequent laws of Ferdinand, and carried to an extent under the Austrian dynasty, that paralyzed colonial trade. Under their most ingeniously perverse system of laws, the interests of both the parent country and the colonies were sacrificed. The latter, condemn- ed 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 Potosi, were jeal- ously locked up within the limits of the Peninsula.