Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/597

Rh The situation was growing insupportable. Commerce and industry were equally stagnant. No land in Europe had greater resources than Spain in the fine wools of Castile, Aragon, and La Mancha; the flax and hemp of Asturias, Catalonia, Galicia, and Leon; the excellent silk of Murcia and Valencia; the iron, steel, and timber of Navarre, Guipuscoa and Biscay; the wines and fruits of Andalusia; but these were all exported as raw materials, and though the trade of the Indies was a jealous monopoly, half the goods sent thither in the fleets were the property of Hollanders, under the names of Spaniards, although Spain was at war with Holland. Partly this was attributable to the disordered currency, and the communities throughout the Peninsula supplicated the crown for relief. There was but one way to obtain this—by retracing the vicious course of the last half century, and the attempt was heroically made. By a pragmatica of August 7, 1628, it was decreed that after the day of publication all the vellón money should be reduced one half in value. To diminish the loss to the holders a complicated arrangement was ordered, by which one half of the depreciation should be made good to them by their towns and villages, and in view of the sacrifice thus imposed on the nation the royal faith was solemnly pledged by Philip IV, for himself and his successors, with all the force of a compact between the crown and the people, that the value of the vellón coinage should never again be tampered with, either to raise or to depress it. After this, any transaction disturbing the parity of the various coinages was declared an offense subject to the severest punishment and to render the measure effective the sternest penalties were directed against the introduction into the kingdom of foreign vellón money. The profits on this had already called forth the most vigorous efforts of repression, and these were now sharpened by declaring it to be a matter of lèse majesté, and subjecting it to the pains of heresy—death by fire, confiscation of all property, and disabilities inflicted on descendants to the second generation. Any vessel bringing it, even without the knowledge of the master, was forfeited; an unsuccessful attempt to import it was punished with death, and knowledge of such attempt without denouncing it incurred the galleys and confiscation. For a while, in fact, the crime was made justiciable by the Inquisition, which was a tribunal inspiring far greater popular dread than the ordinary courts. Evidently the law-makingpower in Spain had few scruples, and no constitutional limitations in its control over the currency.

Yet with all its power it might as well have attempted to control the tides or the winds, and the solemn pledges of the throne were not worth the paper on which they were printed. Richelieu was pressing Spain hard, and the condition of Spanish finance