Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/605

Rh calderilla and véllón grueso—those coinages which had undergone so many vicissitudes, and which, in spite of prohibitions, persistently continued in circulation. They were a shirt of Nessus, clinging to the victim and impossible to discard.

Again the load became too onerous to be endured, and relief was imperative. The mints were pouring forth the molino money there were quantities of it in circulation of pure copper illegitimately issued, and the land was filled with imitations brought from abroad. To remedy this, a decree of February 10, 1680, orders the simultaneous registration and sequestration of the whole, carefully distinguishing the three varieties. The first, or legitimate alloyed coin, was reduced to one fourth of its existing value—that is, the piece which had been originally issued for 16 maravedis, and had in 1664 been cut down to 8, was now still further diminished to 2; the same was done with the native counterfeits, while the foreign ones were accepted at one eighth of their current value. To soften the blow to the holders the legitimate molino was redeemable at the treasury in gold or silver at fifty per cent premium, and was receivable for sixty days for all overdue debts to the fisc up to the end of 1677, while, as a further act of grace, arrearages due up to the end of 1673, amounting to over 12,000,000 ducats, were forgiven.

This measure appears to have been designed as a preliminary to the total extinction of the molino money, for it was followed, May 23d, by an elaborate pragmatica demonetizing this wholly and forbidding its use, only twenty-four hours being allowed during which it could be spent for the purchase of bread, meat, and wine, and for nothing else. In all these efforts at contraction it was expected that the inflated prices, which were a standing grievance, would collapse with the diminution in the circulating medium, and when this result did not follow with sufficient rapidity, there was no hesitation in fixing a scale of maxima, for the transgression of which heavy penalties were threatened. Thus on the present occasion a most elaborate edict was issued, November 27, 1680, consisting of over a hundred folio pages, regulating all dealings. All rents in Madrid are to be reduced to what they had been in 1670, and for buildings of later construction or enlargement the rates are to be determined by the magistrates. Then follows a most extensive list of maximum prices, embracing nearly three thousand items, from raw materials by wholesale to finished products by retail, from wool by the arroba to rhubarb by the drachm, and including what a tailor should receive for making a coat and a washerwoman for washing a shirt. Such supervision by the state becomes endless, and a supplementary edict was requisite, May 2, 1681, supplying omissions and making changes. If currency and values were capable