IF the above is a truthful outline of the causes of Spanish decadence, it can arouse no wonder that Spanish colonial policy has been a failure. All the defects of character and administration which produced such disastrous results at home had naturally fuller scope for development in the colonies. The discoveries of Columbus did not open up a new continent to be settled by industrious immigrants coming to found states and develop their resources in peaceful industry. The marvelous exploits of the Conquistadores were performed in the craziest thirst for gold, and those who succeeded them came in the hope of speedy enrichment and return, to accomplish which they exploited to the utmost the unhappy natives, and when these were no longer available replaced them with African slaves. The mother country similarly looked upon her new possessions simply as a source of revenue, to be drained to the utmost, either for herself or for the benefit of those whom she sent out to govern them. Colonists who finally settled and cast their lot in the New World were consequently exposed to every limitation and discrimination that perverse ingenuity could suggest, and were sacrificed to the advantage, real or imaginary, of Spain. The short-sighted financial and commercial policy at home would in itself have sufficed to condemn the colonies to stagnation and misery, but in addition they were subjected to special restrictions and burdens. It was not until 1788 that trade with them was permitted through any port but Cadiz, whose merchants made use of their monopoly to exact a profit of from one hundred to two hundred per cent. Export and import duties were multiplied, till the producer was deprived of all incentive to exertion, and the populations were taxed to their utmost capacity, the taxes being exacted with merciless severity.
As if this were not enough, the all-pervading influence of clericalism rendered good government well- nigh impossible. Under its influence the colonial organizations consisted of sundry independent jurisdictions, incompatible with the preservation of order in any community, and especially unfitted for the administration of a colony, separated by a thousand leagues from the supreme authority which alone could compose their differences. There was the royal representative, the viceroy or governor, responsible for the defense of the province and the maintenance of order. There was the church establishment with its bishop or archbishop, in no way subordinate to the civil power. There were the various regular orders, -- Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, etc., -- bitterly jealous of one another and prompt to quarrel, exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to their respective superiors or to the Pope, except when suspicion of heresy might render individual members answerable to the Inquisition. Finally, there was the Inquisition itself, which owned obedience only to the Supreme Council of the Holy Office in Madrid, and held itself superior to all other jurisdictions; for under its delegated papal power it could at will paralyze the authority of any one, from the highest to the lowest, by its excommunication, while no priest or prelate could excommunicate its ministers. It was impossible that so irrational a scheme of social order should work smoothly. Causes of dissension, trivial or serious, between these rival and jealous jurisdictions were rarely lacking, and the internal history of the colonies consists in great part of their quarrels, which disturbed the peace of the communities and hindered prosperity and growth.
In The Atlantie Monthly for August, 1891, I described at some length a complicated quarrel between the Franciscans and the Bishop of Cartagena de las Indias, in which both the Inquisition and the royal governor intervened, keeping the community in an uproar from 1683 to 1688. This was followed, in 1693, by an outbreak between the governor, Ceballos, and the Inquisition. In the public meat- market a butcher refused to give precedence to a negro slave of the inquisitor, who thereupon had the indiscreet butcher arrested and confined in chains in the carceles secretas of the Inquisition. This in itself was a most serious punishment, for such imprisonment left an ineffaceable stigma on the sufferer and on his descendants for two generations. The governor pleaded in vain with the inquisitor, and then endeavored secretly to obtain testimony to send to Madrid, but without success, for no one dared to give evidence. The fact of his attempt leaked out, however, and the secretary of the Inquisition led a mob to the palace, and forced the governor, under threat of excommunication, to sign a declaration that he abandoned the case to the Inquisition, that all reference to it should be expunged from the records of the municipality and all papers relating to it should be delivered to the inquisitor. He submitted, and his only recourse was to write a piteous letter to the Council of the Indies. Such appeal to the home authorities was of uncertain outcome, for the inquisitors were by no means ready to submit to an adverse decision. In a complicated quarrel between the cruzada, the episcopal court, the Inquisition, and the viceroy of Peru, in 1729, the inquisitors of Lima formally and repeatedly refused obedience to a royal order sent through the viceroy, alleging that they were subject only to the Supreme Council of the Holy Office. In 1751 they took the same ground in a case in which the king decided against them, and they held out until 1760, when a more peremptory command was received, accompanied by a dispatch from the council which they could not disregard.
Thus, to a greater or less degree, all Spanish colonies were fields in which clericalism rioted at will. Paraguay, where the Jesuits succeeded in building up an independent theocracy, offers the most perfect illustration of the result, and a somewhat less conspicuous instance is found in the Philippines. There the missions of the Augustinian Recollects acquired such power that the annals of that colony seem rather to be the records of the Augustinian province of San Nicolás than those of a royal dependency. This Augustinian supremacy was unsuccessfully disputed by the Dominicans, in the early years of the eighteenth century, but the Jesuits proved to be more dangerous rivals, who did not scruple, in 1736, to induce their native subjects to make war on those of the Augustinians. The banishment in 1767 of the Society of Jesus from the Spanish dominions left the field to the Augustinians, who have since held it, apparently without making effort to secure the good will of their flocks. They had their own internal troubles, however, for in 1712 the hostility between the Aragonese and Castilians led to a schism which had to be referred to Spain for settlement, when the Castilians, who were the losing party, refused to submit until the acting governor, Torralba, employed the persuasive influence of artillery. The character of their relations with the secular authority can be estimated from an occurrence in 1643, when the governor, Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, in preparing to resist an expected attack by the Dutch, undertook to fortify Manila. An Augustinian convent and church occupied a site required for a demilune. Corcuera offered the friars another church and 4000 pesos; but they refused to move, and obstinately remained in the convent until the progress of the works rendered it uninhabitable, when it was torn down and the materials were used in the lines. They raised a great clamor, which probably was the cause of the removal of Corcuera in 1644, when they prosecuted their grievance in court, and obtained a decree reinstating them and casting him in damages to the amount of 25,000 pesos. They tore down the fortifications, rebuilt the church, and threw Corcuera into prison, where he languished under cruel treatment for five years. He had been an excellent administrator, and on his liberation Philip IV. appointed him governor of the Canaries.
In such a community the position of governor had few attractions for an honest man. In 1719, a new one, Bustamente Bustillo, found on his arrival that all the royal officials had been busily embezzling and pilfering, leaving the treasury nearly empty. After ascertaining the facts he set to work energetically to recover the funds and to punish the guilty, who thereupon, as seems to have been customary in such cases, sought asylum in the churches. One of them had carried with him certain official records necessary for the verification of the accounts, and these Bustillo requested the archbishop to make him surrender. The archbishop replied with a learned argument, drawn up for him by a Jesuit, proving that the governor's request was illegal. Bustillo lost his temper at this, and arrested the archbishop, who forthwith cast an interdict over the city. Then the monks and friars turned out in organized bands, marching through the streets with crucifixes, and shouting, " Viva la fé! Viva la Iglesia! " They speedily collected a mob which they led to the palace; the doors were broken in, the governor and his son murdered, and when the archbishop was released he assumed the governorship, under the advice of an assembly consisting exclusively of ecclesiastical dignitaries.
In these perpetually recurring troubles between the secular and the clerical authorities the Inquisition was not behindhand, although there was no organized tribunal in Manila. The Philippines were an appendage to the viceroyalty of New Spain or Mexico, and the Holy Office of Mexico merely delegated a commissioner at Manila to execute its orders and make reports to it. Subordinate as was this position, those who held it deemed themselves superior to the royal authorities. About 1650 the padre commissioner received an order to arrest and send to Acapulco a person who was governor of one of the islands and commandant of a fortified town. The commissioner was also an officer of the government, and knew the risk he ran of offending the governor of the colony in not advising him of what was impending; but the obligation of secrecy in inquisitorial matters was superior to all other considerations. He quietly summoned his alcaide mayor and a sufficient number of familiars, sailed for the island, surprised the governor in his bed, carried him off, and imprisoned him in a convent until there should be an opportunity of shipping him to Mexico. The governor of the colony was Don Diego Faxardo, a violent and irascible soldier, whose term of service was a perpetual embroilment with the unruly jurisdictions under his charge, and who knew the danger of leaving a fortified post without a commander when there was almost constant war, either with the Dutch or with the natives. A rude explosion of wrath was to be expected at this contemptuous disregard of the respect due to his office and of the safety of the land, yet Don Diego so thoroughly recognized the supremacy of the Inquisition that when apprised of the affair he only chided the padre gently for not having given him a chance of winning the graces and indulgences promised for so pious a work, seeing that he would have regarded as the utmost good fortune the opportunity of serving as an alguazil in making the arrest.
Twenty years later, the Augustinian Fray Joseph de Paternina Samaniego, then commissioner of the Inquisition, was even bolder. He was ordered from Mexico to take secret testimony against the governor of the colony, Don Diego de Salcedo, and forward it to Mexico for examination by the tribunal there. This was all that a commissioner was empowered to do, and he was especially instructed to go no further; but the Augustinians had had quarrels with the governor, and the whole affair was probably a plot for his removal. Fray Paternina therefore proceeded to act on the testimony, although the judge, Don Francisco de Montemayor, warned him of his lack of authority, and that such a personage as the governor could not be arrested without a special cédula from the king, passed upon by the Council of the Inquisition. He drew up a warrant of arrest, went at midnight to the palace with some friars and familiars, seized Salcedo in his bed, handcuffed him, and carried him off to the Augustinian convent, where the bells were rung in honor of the event. He then gave notice to the royal court that the governorship was vacant, and might be filled, which was done by the appointment of his ally, Don Juan Manuel de la Penal He further issued an edict forbidding any one, under pain of excommunication, to speak about the arrest or about his other proceedings; and to inspire fear he brought charges against various persons, under pretext that they were inimical to the Holy Office. Salcedo's property was sequestrated, to the profit of those concerned in the affair, and he was shipped by the first vessel to Acapulco, but he died on the voyage. When the news of this outrage reached Madrid by way of Flanders, the Council of the Indies complained bitterly, and asked that steps be taken to prevent a repetition of acts so dangerous to the safety of the colonies. The Council of the Inquisition calmly replied that no new instructions were needed, for there were ample provisions for filling a sudden vacancy; as for Fray Paternina, if he had gone too far he would be duly corrected. The Council of the Indies insisted, and was supported by the queen regent. Meanwhile, the Council of the Inquisition had examined the testimony taken agninst Salcedo, pronounced it frivolous, declared his arrest void, and ordered his property to be restored to his heirs, while Fray Paternina was to be sent to Spain for trial. On the journey he died at Acapulco, and the matter was dropped.
Successful colonization under such a system was a manifest impossibility, and it is no wonder that the Spanish dependencies languished, in spite of their infinite potentialities of wealth and prosperity. The narrow and selfish policy of the mother country deprived the colonists of all incentives to exertion; the officials sent from Spain enriched themselves, the tax- gatherers seized all superfluous earnings; there were no accumulation of capital and no advancement. In 1736, the viceroy of the vast kingdom of Peru, Don Jose Armendaris, Marquis of Castel- Fuerte, in the report which, according to custom, he drew up for the instruction of his successor, described the condition of the colony as deplorable. The Spanish population was mostly concentrated in Lima; the nobles and the wealthy oppressed the poor; the corregidores and priests oppressed the Indians; the priests paid little attention to their religious duties, for they were not compelled to residence by their bishops, and were abandoned to sloth and licentiousness; the judges were venal; and the population was diminishing. The religious orders, he said, ought to be checked, and not encouraged, for in Lima there were thirty- four convents, each of them, on an average, equal to four in Spain, which was the most ecclesiastical of all lands. This monastic hypertrophy he attributed to the fact that the men had no other career open to them, and the women consequently could not find husbands. This gloomy utterance was reechoed, twenty years later, by a subsequent viceroy, Don Jose Antonio Manto de Velasco.
Still more desponding is a report made in 1772 by Francisco Antonio Moreno y Escandon as to the condition of the "New Kingdom of Granada," embracing the northern coast from Panama to Venezuela, a region abounding in natural wealth. The local officials everywhere, he says, were indifferent and careless as to their duty; the people were steeped in poverty; trade was almost extinct; capital was lacking, and there were no opportunities for its investment; the only source of support was the cultivation of small patches of ground. Every one sought to subsist on the government by procuring some little office. The mining of the precious metals was the sole source of trade, of procuring necessities from abroad, and of meeting the expenses of the government; but although the mines were as rich as ever, their product had greatly decreased. Commerce with Spain employed only one or two ships, with registered cargoes, a year from Cadiz to Cartagena, whence the goods were distributed through the interior, but so burdened with duties and expenses that no profit could be made on them. If freedom of export could be had for the rich productions of the country, -- cocoa, tobacco, precious woods, etc., -- the colony would flourish; but there were no manufactures, and no money could be kept in the land. The missions had made no progress for a hundred years in christianizing the Indians, for the missionaries undertook the duty only for the purpose of securing a life of ease and sloth.
Such was the result of three hundred years of colonization under Spanish methods; and we can scarce wonder that, after such a training, the nations which emancipated themselves have found self-government so difficult. Under the warning given by their loss, some improvement has been made in the insular possessions which were unable to throw off the yoke, but not enough to prevent chronic disaffection and constantly recurring efforts at revolt. Spain has made of her colonies the buried talent, and the fulfillment of the parable must come to pass.
The Atlantic Monthly; July 1898; The Decadence of Spain; Volume 82, No. 489; pages 36 - 46.
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