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cious laws, succeeded in restoring it to such repute, CHAPTER that this noble animal became an extensive article

of foreign trade. 75 But the chief staple of the country was wool; which, since the introduction of English sheep at the close of the fourteenth century, had reached a degree of fineness and beauty, that enabled it, under the present reign, to compete with any other in Europe. 76

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tures.

To what extent the finer manufactures were car- Manufac ried, or made an article of export, is uncertain. The vagueness of statistical information in these early times has given rise to much crude speculation and to extravagant estimates of their resources, which have been met by a corresponding skepticism in later and more scrutinizing critics. Capmany, the most acute of these, has advanced the opinion, that the coarser cloths only were manufactured in Castile, and those exclusively for home consumption." The royal ordinances, however,

75 Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 127, 128.- Ante, Part II., Chapter 3, note 12.-The cortes of Toledo, in 1525, complained, “ que habia tantos caballos Españoles en Francia como en Castilla." (Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 285.) The trade, however, was contraband; the laws against the exportation of horses being as ancient as the time of Alfonso XI. (See also Ordenanças Reales, fol. 85, 86.)

Laws can never permanently avail against national prejudices. Those in favor of mules have been so strong in the Peninsula, and such the consequent decay of the fine breed of horses, that the Spaniards have been compelled to supply themselves with the latter from

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PART

II.

Agriculture.

78

imply, in the character and minuteness of their regulations, a very considerable proficiency in many of the mechanic arts." Similar testimony is borne by intelligent foreigners, visiting or residing in the country at the beginning of the sixteenth century; who notice the fine cloths and manufacture of arms in Segovia," the silks and velvets of Granada and Valencia, 80 the woollen and silk fabrics of Toledo, which gave employment to ten thousand artisans, 81 the curiously wrought plate of Valladolid, 2 and the fine cutlery and glass manufactures of Barcelona, rivalling those of Venice. 83

82

The recurrence of seasons of scarcity, and the fluctuation of prices, might suggest a reasonable distrust of the excellence of the husbandry under this reign. 84 The turbulent condition of the coun

78 Pragmáticas del Reyno, passim. Many of them were designed to check impositions, too often practised in the manufacture and sale of goods, and to keep them up to a fair standard.

79 L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 11.

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80 Ibid., fol. 19. Navagiero, Viaggio, fol. 26. The Venetian minister, however, pronounces them inferior to the silks of his own country.

81 Proueyda," says Marineo, "de todos officios, y artes mecánicas que en ella se exercitan mucho: y principalmente en lanor, y exercicio de lanas, y sedas. Por las quales dos cosas biuen en esta ciudad mas de diez mil personas. Es de mas desto la ciudad muy rica, por los grandes tratos de mercadurias." Cosas Memorables, fol. 12. 82 Ibid., fol. 15. - Navagiero, a more parsimonious eulogist, remarks, nevertheless, "Sono in Va

lladolid assai artefici di ogni sorte, e se vi lavora benessimo de tutte le arti, e sopra tutto d'Argenti, e vi son tanti argenteri quanti non sono in due altre terre." Viaggio, fol. 35.

83 Geron. Paulo, a writer at the close of the fifteenth century, cited by Capmany, Mem. de Barcelona, tom. i. part. 3, p. 23.

84 The twentieth Ilustracion of Señor Clemencin's invaluable compilation contains a table of prices of grain, in different parts of the kingdom, under Ferdinand and Isabella. Take, for example, those of Andalusia. In 1488, a year of great abundance, the fanega of wheat sold in Andalusia for 50 maravedies; in 1489, it rose to 100; in 1505, a season of great scarcity, to 375, and even 600; in 1508, it was at 306; and in 1509, it had fallen to 85 maravedies. Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. pp. 551, 552.

XXVI.

try may account for this pretty fairly during the CHAPTER early part of it. Indeed, a neglect of agriculture, to the extent implied by these circumstances, is wholly irreconcilable with the general tenor of Ferdinand and Isabella's legislation, which evidently relies on this as the main spring of national prosperity. It is equally repugnant, moreover, to the reports of foreigners, who could best compare the state of the country with that of others at the same period. They extol the fruitfulness of a soil, which yielded the products of the most opposite climes; the hills clothed with vineyards and plantations of fruit trees, much more abundant, it would seem, in the northern regions, than at the present day; the valleys and delicious vegas, glowing with the ripe exuberance of southern vegetation; extensive districts, now smitten with the curse of barrenness, where the traveller scarce discerns the vestige of a road or of a human habitation, but which then teemed with all that was requisite to the sustenance of the populous cities in their neighbourhood. 85

85 Compare, for example, the accounts of the environs of Toledo and Madrid, the two most considerable cities in Castile, by ancient and modern travellers. One of the most intelligent and recent of the latter, in his journey between these two capitals, remarks, "There is sometimes a visible track, and sometimes none; most commonly we passed over wide sands. The country between Madrid and Toledo, I need scarcely say, is ill peopled and ill cultivated; for it is all a part of the same arid plain, that stretches on every side around the

capital; and which is bounded on
this side by the Tagus. The
whole of the way to Toledo, I
passed through only four inconsid-
erable villages; and saw two oth-
ers at a distance. A great part of
the land is uncultivated, covered
with furze and aromatic plants;
but here and there some corn land
is to be seen." (Inglis, Spain in
1830, vol. i. p. 366.) What a
contrast does all this present to the
language of the Italians, Navagiero
and Marineo, in whose time the
country around Toledo "surpassed
all other districts of Spain, in the

PART

II.

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The inhabitant of modern Spain or Italy, who wanders amid the ruins of their stately cities, their grass-grown streets, their palaces and temples crumbling into dust, their massive bridges choking up the streams they once proudly traversed, the very streams themselves, which bore navies on their bosoms, shrunk into too shallow a channel for the meanest craft to navigate, the modern Spaniard who surveys these vestiges of a giant race, the tokens of his nation's present degeneracy, must turn for relief to the prouder and earlier period of her history, when such great works could alone be achieved; and it is no wonder, that he should be led, in his enthusiasm, to invest it with a romantic and exaggerated coloring. Such a period in Spain cannot be looked for in the last, still less in the seventeenth century, for the nation had then reached the lowest ebb of its fortunes; nor in the

excellence and fruitfulness of the
soil; " which, "skilfully irrigated
by the waters of the Tagus, and
minutely cultivated, furnished every
variety of fruit and vegetable pro-
duce to the neighbouring city.
While, instead of the sunburnt
plains around Madrid, it is de-
scribed as situated in the bosom
of a fair country, with an ample
territory, yielding rich harvests of
corn and wine, and all the other
aliments of life." Cosas Memo-
rables, fol. 12, 13. — Viaggio, fol.
7, 8.

66

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86

87

1594, "donde se solian labrar veinte y treinta mil arrobas, no se labran hoi seis, y donde habia señores de ganado de grandisima cantidad, han disminuido en la misma y mayor proporcion, acaeciendo lo mismo en todas las otras cosas del comercio universal y particular. Lo cual hace que no haya ciudad de las principales destos réinos ni lugar ninguno, de donde no falte notable vecindad, como se echa bien de ver en la muchedumbre de casas que estan cerradas y despobladas, y en la baja que han dado los arrendamientos de las pocas que se arriendan y habitan." Apud Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 304.

87 A point which most writers would probably agree in fixing at 1700, the year of Charles II.'s death, the last and most imbecile of the Austrian dynasty. The

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close of the sixteenth, for the desponding language CHAPTER of cortes shows that the work of decay and depopulation had then already begun.88 It can only be found in the first half of that century, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and that of their successor Charles the Fifth; in which last, the state, under the strong impulse it had received, was carried onward in the career of prosperity, in spite of the ignorance and mismanagement of those who guided it.

policy.

There is no country which has been guilty of Economical such wild experiments, or has showed, on the whole, such profound ignorance of the true principles of economical science, as Spain under the sceptre of the family of Austria. And, as it is not always easy to discriminate between their acts and those of Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the germs of much of the subsequent legislation may be said to have been planted, this circumstance has brought undeserved discredit on the government of the latter. Undeserved, because laws, mischievous in their eventual operation, were not always so at the time for which they were originally devised; not to add, that what was intrinsically bad, has been aggravated ten fold under the blind legislation of their successors. It is also true, that many of the

89

population of the kingdom, at this time, had dwindled to 6,000,000. See Laborde, (Itinéraire, tom. vi. pp. 125, 143, ed. 1830,) who seems to have better foundation for this census than for most of those in his table.

88 See the unequivocal language of cortes, under Philip II. (supra.)

With every allowance, it infers an
alarming decline in the prosperity
of the nation.

89 One has only to read, for an
evidence of this, the lib. 6, tit. 18,
of the "Nueva Recopilacion," on
"cosas prohibidas"; the laws on
gilding and plating, lib. 5, tit. 24;
on apparel and luxury, lib. 7, tit.

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