Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/600

584 other restamped vellón is to be surrendered by May 15th, after which it is to be no longer current, and disobedience of these orders is visited with death and confiscation. The natural result of this measure is seen in a decree of September 5th of the same year, limiting the premium on specie to fifty per cent until the arrival of the silver fleets. That this was below the market rate is shown in the prohibition of all indirect ways of evasion and of dealing in futures. How this condition affected all transactions, large and small, and how business was conducted under the double standard, are illustrated in some statements now before me of the expenses of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition about this time. After summing up the aggregate of the salaries and other items, in one case twenty-eight per cent and in another fifty per cent is added to show the total amount to be provided in vellón. When governmental outlays were thus increased we can not wonder at the struggle to keep down the premium on the one hand while stimulating it on the other by constant dilutions of the currency. The situation affords a singularly forcible illustration of the power possessed by an inferior money to force a superior one out of circulation. The largest of the debased coinage was only a piece of a quarter of a ryal, equivalent in our modern American system to three cents, yet it had completely demonetized silver and gold, and had become the practical standard of value. The Spanish possessions were the chief source from which the civilized world obtained its supply of the precious metals, yet Spain, in spite of the most arbitrary measures, could retain none of them within her borders. So scarce had they become that for twenty years, from 1623 to 1642, there had been repeated decrees forbidding the use of gold and silver in the arts—their melting and fashioning by artisans, even their employment for plating and gilding and in embroidery. In 1642 these laws were supplemented by others prohibiting the sale of silver plate except to be broken up for coinage, and owners were tempted to bring it to the mints with the promise of a bonus of five per cent in vellón, in addition to the coin that it would yield. At the same time the laws against exportation were rendered still more rigorous, suspending even licenses to carry silver away for the royal service in Flanders and Italy.

The contractionist policy was now granted another trial, and a comprehensive scheme was evolved to get rid of the intolerable burden and bring all the various kinds of coinage to a parity. The partial attempt of 1628 had proved a failure; but if all the base money in the land could be controlled, there was reasonable prospect that another efl'ort might be successful. To accomplish this a pragmatica was signed August 31, 1642, and sent under seal to the local authorities everywhere with instructions to open it on