Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/595

Rh blancas, rendering them scarce at home. Thus far there had been no serious tampering with the currency, but not long after this, in 1566, the necessities of Philip II led him to seek relief in debasing the minor coinage. lb is true that he was the richest monarch in the civilized world; that, besides his revenues from his European dominions, the crown claimed twenty per cent of all the precious metals mined in the Indies and ten percent seigniorage for minting the rest; but the Venetian envoy Paolo Tiepolo tells us in 1565 that his expenditure for interest alone was 5,050,000 ducats per annum, which, when capitalized at eight per cent, amounted to 63,000,000 ducats of indebtedness—a sum incredible even to the Italian financiers of the period. He had little scruple as to the means of alleviating the burden. In 1559 he had experimented with methods suggested to him of issuing money falsified with a certain powder combined with quick-silver, which when rubbed over copper gave it the semblance of silver, and was proof, as we are told, against the touchstone and the hammer, but not against fire. One inventor of this promising scheme, named Tiberio della Rocca, lost Philip's favor through a quarrel with the royal confessor; another one, a German named Peter Sternberg, was more fortunate, and secured payments amounting to 2,000 ducats for his discovery; but, although every effort was made to keep the matter secret, the Córtes got wind of it, and their remonstrances forced the abandonment of the scheme.

Compared with this wholesale fraud, an enlargement of the token coinage of base metal might well seem harmless, and it is a striking proof of the dangers attendant on any vitiation of the currency that consequences so deplorable and so lasting should have sprung from a source apparently so trivial. In 1566 Philip ordered the coinage of a new alloy, to be known as moneda de vellón rica, with a larger proportion of silver—98 grains to the marc of copper, or about $1⁄47$. The coins were all small: quartillos, 80 to the marc, to be current for a quarter of a ryal (about three cents); quartos, 170 to the marc, worth four maravedis (about a cent and a half); and medios quartos, 340 to the marc, worth two maravedis. At the same time the old blancas, two to the maravedi, were retained, but the silver alloy was reduced to four grains in the marc; and the number to be worked from the marc was increased to 240, augmenting the profit on every marc by a ryal and a quarter. What amount of this new vellón coinage was poured forth from the mint we have no means of ascertaining, but there can be little doubt that it was as great as the rude mechanical facilities of the age were capable of producing, for Philip's necessities were ever growing, what with the construction of the Escurial, the perpetual drain of the Flemish revolt,