Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/594

578. She, moreover, enjoyed the monopoly of commerce with the New World and its stores of precious metals; and this enormous power, military and financial, was wielded by an absolute monarch who combined the legislative and executive functions unhampered and unrestrained. If ever a successful attempt could be made to overcome the self-acting laws which govern trade it could be made by Philip II and his successors.

Like all other mediæval kingdoms, Castile had had ample experience of the evils of an uncertain standard of value. In the latter half of the fifteenth century the feeble Henry IV, among other devices to secure the allegiance of faithless magnates, parted freely with the right to coin money, until there were about a hundred and fifty private mints scattering their issues throughout the land. The crown itself reduced the standard of gold coin to 7 carats, while the irresponsible private coiners debased it to whatever their cupidity dictated. When Ferdinand and Isabella came to the throne their resolute sagacity speedily put an end to this deplorable condition. In their final legislation the gold standard was fixed at 23$3⁄4$ carats; that of silver at the one traditional in Spain known as 11 dineros and 4 grains, equivalent to 0·935 fine. The marc, or half pound, of gold, containing 4,608 grains, was worked into 65$1⁄3$ excelentes or ducats, also known as escudos or crowns. The marc of silver was worked into 67 reales or ryals. The monetary unit was the maravedi, of which there were 34 to the ryal and 374 to the crown, there being thus 11 ryals to the crown. For convenience in small transactions there was an alloy known as vellón, consisting of 7 grains of silver to the marc of copper, the marc being worked into 192 blancas, the blanca being half a maravedi, and the value of the marc of alloy and the cost of coinage being reckoned at 96 maravedis.

In 1537 Charles V reduced the standard of the gold crown to 22 carats and its weight to 68 to the marc, diminishing its value to 330 maravedis, which he says brought it to an equality with the best coinage of France and Italy. In 1552, moreover, he reduced the silver alloy in the marc of vellón from 7 to 5$1⁄2$ grains, giving as a reason that there had been a profit in the exportation of the