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been any positive diminution of its antient wealth or resources? What reason have we for believing, that it has actually declined in population, or that its inhabitants were ever more industrious, or more addicted to commerce than they are at present? Such a previous inquiry seems necessary to appreciate justly the bad effects of its government; and yet, obvious and essential as it appears to a correct judgment of the case, it has been hitherto entirely neglected, or pursued in the most superficial and careless manner, by those who have written and speculated on Spanish

affairs.

National vanity and false patriotism have misled all the Spanish authors who have turned their thoughts to this subject. Fully persuaded that their own country was the most fertile, and the most bountifully supplied by nature of any in Europe, but, unable to disguise from themselves its real backwardness and inferiority to other states, they sought for consolation in pompous and exaggerated descriptions of its ancient grandeur, and gravely explained, conformably to the prevailing theory of their day, the causes of a decline, which had no existence but in their own imagination. Sometimes it was the neglect of sheep, and sometimes the neglect of agriculture, which had ruined their country. Sometimes they complained of the number of strangers who overspread the land like so many locusts, and devoured the subsistence of its inhabitants; and sometimes they lamented the national prejudices against foreigners, which prevented the arts and manufactures of other countries from being introduced into Spain. Sometimes they complained of the exportation of wool, and the importation of cloth; and sometimes they recommended duties on the exportation of their own manufactures, that foreigners might not have the fruits of their industry for nothing. Sometimes they urged their government to expel its own subjects, with every degree of cruelty and injustice; and sometimes they succeeded in persuading it to import foreigners, with ostentatious pretences of benevolence and hospitality. At one moment they declaimed against luxury, and obtained the enactment of sumptuary laws; and next moment they recommended bounties to foreign artists, and preached up the advantage of fixing and establishing the arts of luxury in Spain. At one and the same time they built palaces for beggars, and pronounced orations in praise of industry; and, with the same breath that they held up commerce as the chief object of national attention, they accused their merchants of selfishness, and vainly endeavoured to wean them from an undue regard to their private interests. But, whatever might be the diversity of their opinions, with regard to the causes and the cure of the many evils under which their Country

country suffered, they were unanimous in their accounts of its antient prosperity. Even those who were not the dupes of such ridiculous and extravagant fables, adopted and repeated them, in the hopes of rousing their countrymen to industry and exertion, by flattering pictures of the former opulence and grandeur of their land.

Foreigners, who turned their attention to the affairs of Spain, were deceived by the positive and confident tone with which the native writers described the ancient greatness, and deplored the subsequent decline of their prosperity. And, indeed, when they considered that, for a century and a half, the great object of modern politics had been the maintenance and defence of the other states of Europe against the overgrown power of Spain, and contrasted their past fears and apprehensions with the weakness and total -insignificance into which that kingdom afterwards sunk, they were easily persuaded to give credit to the Spanish authors, and to believe that the fall of so mighty a power must have been preceded by some great and sensible decline in the heart and centre of the monarchy itself. They forgot, that it is not the absolute, but the relative power of a state, which renders it formidable to its neighbours; and that a nation may decline in its relative strength, without any absolute diminution of its resources, by remaining stationary while other states are advancing. They forgot, that the alarming preponderance of the Spanish monarchy arose from the combination of a variety of causes, some of them accidental, and others temporary ;-from the union of so many rich and extensive states. under one Sovereign ;-from the pos- session of Mexico and Peru, while its rivals were excluded from both the Indies;-from the civil and religious discussions of its neighbours ;-from the bigotry and fanaticism of the age, which placed the kings of Spain at the head of the Catholic part of Europe; and, lastly, from the valour and discipline of the Spanish armies, and from the wisdom and sagacity of the Spanish councils. Yet the slight and hardly perceptible impression of the Spanish arms on the enemies of that monarchy, during the victorious reigns of Charles V. and Philip II., while these advantages were entire, might have tended, in some degree, to cor⚫rect the traditional accounts of the greatness of its former power. The ressitance maintained by Francis I. and Henry II. against the arms of Charles V., and the successes of Elizabeth and of the Dutch commonwealth over Philip II., might have suggested the reflection, that the danger from Spain must have been more apparent than real. While its miserable decline during the 17th century, and the slowness of its recovery during the 18th,

might have suggested doubts as to the solidity of the basis on which its former greatness, such as it was, had been founded.

Countries, where agriculture and manufactures have been once firmly rooted, soon recover from the losses they sustain in war, and even struggle with success against the vices and defects of a bad government. How quickly did France recruit her strength after the long and sanguinary contests of the League; and how speedily have Flanders and Lombardy recovered from the devastations of war, to which they have been so often victims? Nothing short of Eastern despotism or feudal anarchy will utterly extinguish arts and industry in a country where they have been thoroughly established, and long cultivated by the people. But the causes to which the decline of Spain has been attributed, though capable of retarding the advancement, or even of arresting the progress of a nation, are insufficient to communicate to it a retrograde movement, or to eradicate staple and established manufactures, which have formed the occupation of the great body of the people, and served them for ages as a source of wealth and happiness. The system of taxation in Spain is injudicious, oppressive, and full of vexation to the people; but the most exceptionable parts of it have long since been modified and corrected; and the total amount of the taxes is inconsiderable, even when compared with the limited means and faculties of the country. There are many hurtful monopolies in Spain, and many ill advised restraints and impediments to commerce; but they are not more numerous nor prejudicial than they were in Prussia under the great Frederick. The administration of justice is not to be praised in Spain; but it is not a great deal worse than it was in France under the Bourbons. A mistaken charity lavishes vast sums of money in Spain on the idle and the profligate; but the total amount of this misplaced bounty is infinitely less than that of the poor-rates in England. Religious bigotry and intolerance have never been stronger nor more universal in Spain, than they were in this island in the time of Elizabeth, or under the princes of the house of Stuart. The expulsion of the Jews and Moriscoes was no doubt a cruel and inhuman act; but, as both the court and people were obstinately determined to exclude them for ever from the rank and consideration of old Christians, we are by no means convinced, that it was not better policy to banish them at once from the kingdom, than to allow so many secret enemies, in possession of the most vulnerable part of the country, to increase and multiply, till they should become too strong for their oppressors. Had the ministers of Philip III. delayed the expulsion of the Moriscoes, so frugal in their diet, so industrious in their habits, and so simple in

VOL. X. NO. 20.

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their

their manners were these descendants of the Saracens, that, excluded as they were from participating in the honours and dangers of war, and exclusively addicted to the laborious but healthful occupations of agriculture, in less than half a century they must have outnumbered the old Christians in all the southern provinces of Spain; and thereby increased at once the danger of slighting or offending them, and added force to the popular and royal prejudices against admitting them to the civil honours of the state. And, with respect to the effects of that expulsion, (the subject of such reproach against the Spanish nation on the part of the French and English, as if the one had not revoked the edict of Nantz, and the other broken the articles of Limerick), it should be recollected, that authors have been far mistaken who have supposed that with the Moriscoes the Spaniards lost their manufacturers and artizans. It is true, that in the south of Spain many of the ordinary and most necessary trades are still reputed infamous, because in very old times they were exercised by Moors and Jews. But, at the period of their expulsion, the greater part of the Moriscoes were small farmers and gardeners, who lived in penury and misery, and contrived, by hard labour and rigid economy, to pay exorbitant rents to their landlords, in return for security and protection against the bigotry of the priests.

Don Antonio Capmany is, we believe, the first Spanish author who has combated the general prejudice of his countrymen in favour of the ancient opulence and prosperity of Spain. At the end of the third volume of his valuable work, entituled, Memorias historicas sobre la Marina, comercio y artes de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona, he has dedicated an entire chapter to an examination of the question, Whether the arts and manufactures of Spain were at any time equal to those of other nations? A republication of that chapter, with several additional facts and observations on the same subject, forms the first essay of the volume which lies before us. As the subject of the inquiry is curious, and the view which Capmany has taken of it will, to most of our readers, have the recommendation of novelty at least, we shall give a short outline of his arguments.

We must, in the first place, remark, that when we cast our eyes over the Spanish economists, from Ward and Campomanes, who wrote under Charles III. and Ferdinand VI., to Alonso de Herrera, who flourished under Ferdinand the Catholic, we are struck with the observation, that none of these authors ever represents his country as flourishing or populous at the period when he is writing; but, on the contrary, every one of them laments the decay of trade and industry in his own times, and

complains

complains of the laziness and profligacy of the present race of his countrymen, while he refers us back to some remote period, when Spain was rich, industrious, and full of inhabitants. This reminds us forcibly of what happens daily to a traveller in Spain. At every town where he stops, he is told of banditti who infest the roads, and warned of the dangers that await him near some distant town, or at some remote pass in the mountains. But, as he advances, the danger continually recedes ;-till, at length, he discovers that the stories which had at first alarmed him, have no other foundation than the folly and credulity of his informers. We shall follow the plan of Capmany's essay, by examining, first, what was the state of commerce and manufactures; and, secondly, what was the state of agriculture and population in Spain, at those periods when it is supposed to have been most flourishing.

Commerce and Manufactures.

It would be idle to inquire into the state of commerce and manufactures in Spain before the conquest of Seville in 1248. The Catalans and Guipuzcoans had indeed applied to commerce and navigation at an earlier period, and some woollen and cotton manufactures were already established in Catalonia; but these attempts were still in their infancy, and were greatly surpassed by the subsequent exertions of the same provinces. It would be equally unnecessary to extend our inquiry beyond the reign of Philip III., since it is admitted, that, before the death of that Prince, Spain was reduced to the most deplorable poverty and wretchedness. In the intermediate time, a great event, the discovery and conquest of America, had occurred, which is supposed by almost all writers to have had the most fatal influence on the industry and population of Spain. Was it before or after that event, that Spain is supposed to have been eminent as a commercial and manufacturing country? We shall inquire, first, what documents remain of the state of commerce and industry in Spain, in the interval between the recovery of Seville from the Moors, and the acquisition of colonies in America; and, secondly, we shall trace the effects of those colonies on the commerce and manufactures of the mother country, during the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II.

With regard to the first period, we are referred by Capmany to the works of two Florentine merchants, Balducci and Uzano, who published, the former in 1339, the latter in 1440, commercial guides,' for the use of merchants, under the title of Prattica della Mercatura. * These books give prolix and circumE e 2

* Republished at Lucca, in 2 vol. 4to. 1776.

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