for those possessions. In older days the efforts of the expeditionists had been, comparatively speaking, honest, or at least invigorating, for the physical energy required to open up the country and subdue the natives restrained them from the mischief of inaction. They now became a greedy gang of traffickers in slaves and bullion. Wherever they worked or wandered it was for gold alone. In this their interest coincided with the Emperor's, for Charles, embroiled in conquests or campaigns all over Europe, was ever in need of money. Mine after mine was struck, in Boriquen, in Tierra Firme, in Veragua. Silver and gold; Silver and gold; gold and silver! How strong is their contamination! The more his subjects. found, the more the Emperor demanded; the decrees of the Consejo de Indias were travestied into a vulgar batch of bonds; and the souls of the Indians-according to the phrase which was so often heard to fall from the lips of Isabella-were irretrievably abandoned.

Or we

It proved indeed a día de mala sombra for Spain when first her caravels touched the verdant and alluring anchorages of Hispaniola. Never in the world's history have a few shiploads of metal brought so thorough a damnation on their consignee. may liken the gold and silver which overflowed the quays of Cádiz to the sprite escaping from Pandora's casket, instigated by a malevolent design of spoiling and debasing human happiness, and in the present instance beginning with the very hands which had released him from his hiding-place.

I shall revert to the fact that in subsequent years the Indies came to form the only source of national

revenue a source irregular and fluctuating, to be sure, but ever a handy scapegoat whereon all deficits might be laid. "The King," said a journal of 1637, "has sent the Council a demand for eleven millions and a half of ducats for next year's campaign. 'Tis thought that he will squeeze it out of his presents from the Indies."

The misery and degradation of a later age grew to be so fantastic in their ghastliness that I fear that many of the statistics I shall soon adduce will hardly be credited. Apart from the fatal illusion that their wealth was inexhaustible, the pestilent El Doradoes oversea begot an avarice, a sordid, cruel greed, a prevalence of villainy and slyness that drove the nation frenzied. While labourers-the few that were left were famishing in the fields; while noblemen whose retinues were princely in their number and the splendour of their liveries, died without a ducat to pay their funeral, there was no poverty; for were there not the Indies? Every gentleman

about the court of the House of Austria lived in imaginary occupation of his Barataria. We are told that when Philip the Second was petitioned for grants of money, he was accustomed to inscribe these words:" Diga de dónde lo hé de sacar" ("Let him tell me where it is to come from "). Doubtless if his applicants had dared to answer so terrible a king, they would have exclaimed-what was already festering in their fancy-" From the Indies."

The spoliation of the colonies killed honourable commerce. What every man could grasp, by fair means or foul, was his; and the foulest means prevailed. "In Seville they are waiting for the

treasure-ships and making great endeavour to prevent extravagance of the silver. Alcalde Márquez is busying himself with this concern, and has ordered the seizure of all letters arriving from the Indies for private persons. 'Tis feared the Dutchmen may cut off the fleet; or if not, and the fleet should get to harbour, that His Majesty may seize the silver."

Such, viewed in a colder light of criticism than is usual, was the legacy of Columbus to his adopted countrymen—a national intoxication; king, favourites, and subjects hurling themselves beneath the Juggernaut of Mammon, grovelling in luxurious want or squalid ostentation, or striving feverishly in the vilest and most enervating of all occupationsthe pursuit of riches for the sake alone of their most sensual enjoyment. How eloquently are we told that "industrial work, still under bondage to Mammon, the rational soul of it not yet awakened, is a tragic spectacle. Men in the rapidest motion and self-motion; restless, with convulsive energy, as if driven by Galvanism, as if possessed by a Devil; tearing asunder mountains-to no purpose, for Mammon is always Midas-eared."*

Speaking somewhat paradoxically, the ruin of Spain was brought about by the very character of her aggrandizement; and Picatoste, following the fallacious assertions of other writers, was wrong in declaring that "Charles the Fifth's was the initial influence; his policy was the needle which guided our statecraft into a false direction."+ For

* Carlyle. Past and Present.

+ Estudios sobre la grandeza y decadencia de España.

the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella is divisible into the retrospective, or what they effected in order to begin to reconstruct a disunited and debilitated state; and the prevoyant, or what they disposed in order that the work of reconstruction should continue after their death. Of these two classes of their government, the former has almost entirely engrossed the attention of historians; and it has often surprised me that the triumphs attributable to a great reign should blind the student so completely to its faults and vices. The rebuilding of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella was indeed an effort of unprecedented grandeur. During the earlier portion of their reign those monarchs strengthened what was weak, restored the fallen, purified the debauched and vitiated court of the contemptible Henry the Impotent, developed and protected trade, and equalized the laws, administering impartial justice "to all men, great and mean, whoso should ask it."* They found their country, tottering and dismembered; they fortified and revived her, recovering all that was needed to complete her sanity and welfare. But subsequently their evil genius triumphed, and the glorious work they had accomplished with one hand, they dashed incontinently to pieces with the other.

In this connexion I would repeat a judgment upon the Catholic Sovereigns which I believe to be more intimate and fair than any other. It was written in 1513 by Francesco Guicciardini, among his Ricordi, "a series of biographical notices replete

*"A chicos é grandes, quantos querían pedirla."