708 DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM 



cupiisse ; ut ex Pragmatica Sanctione, hoc anno promulgata, 

 cernere est. 1 



5. Certissimum est Artes Mechanicas Sedentarias, quae non 

 sub dio sed sub tecto exercentur, atque Manufacturas Delicatas 

 (quae digitum potius quam brachium requirunt), sua natura 

 militaribus animis esse contrarias. In universum, populi belli- 



1 In 1618, the Cortes, among other projects of reformation, petitioned the king not 

 to grant any licences for monastic foundations. 



The excessive multiplication of religious houses had attracted the attention of the 

 government long before ; and the opinions of a number of ecclesiastics were taken on 

 the subject, in 1603, but nothing further seems to have been done. Subsequently 

 however to the representation of the Cortes, the state of the kingdoms belonging to the 

 crown of Castile was referred by the king to the council of Castile ; and their report, which 

 is given at full length in Davila's Life of Philip the Third (see chap. 86.), is known as the 

 Gran Consulta de 1619. The distress and depopulation of the parts of Spain to which it 

 refers are stated in very strong language, the causes assigned being mainly excessive and 

 oppressive taxation, the increase of luxury, and the non-residence of the rich on their 

 estates. To relieve the revenue, the revocation of royal grants, when any fair reason 

 could be found for doing so, is recommended. Sumptuary laws are also proposed, and 

 some regulations tending to the relief of the agricultural class. The king is also 

 advised to be cautious in granting licenses to religious houses. Ortiz states expressly 

 that no measures were taken to carry out the recommendation of the council during 

 the reign of Philip the Third ; a statement which seems to be fully confirmed by the 

 silence of so copious and seemingly so painstaking an annalist as Gonzalez Davila. 

 The assertion to be found in some French and English books, that the king made a 

 decree in virtue of which those who introduced agricultural improvements on their 

 estates were ennobled, is in itself exceedingly improbable, and has perhaps no other 

 foundation than the imagination of some French economist who may have been mis- 

 led by the circumstance that in the Cortes of 1618 something was done with respect 

 to proofs of nobility. I speak however without having seen Navarrete's Conservation 

 delict Monarquia. Soon after the accession of Philip the Fourth a royal decree or 

 Pragmatica was published which attempted to carry out some of the recommendations 

 of the council, and which gave certain privileges to persons who married, and further 

 immunities*to those who had six children. For some account of its provisions, see 

 Cespedes' History of the first Six Years of Philip the Fourth (published at Lisbon in 

 1631, and reprinted in Spain in 1634), book 3. cc. 17, 18. Cespedes does not pre- 

 cisely fix the date of the decree, but it was plainly issued some time in the summer of 

 1622, and is no doubt that to which Bacon refers. The date assigned by Desormeaux, 

 namely the 10th of February 1624, is manifestly wrong; the sumptuary part of the 

 enactment was suspended on the occasion of the visit of Prince Charles in 1623. See 

 Mead's Letters to Stuteville, in Ellis' 's Letters. 



It is a historical commonplace to assert that the depopulation of Spain was caused 

 by the expulsion of the Moriscos, but this alone could not have produced so permanent 

 an effect. The energies of the country were exhausted by excessive and unequal 

 taxation ; and the increase of the number of religious houses, especially of those belong- 

 ing to the Mendicant Orders, aggravated the evil. Ranke has justly remarked that 

 Spain must always have been a thinly peopled country ; and he might have added, a 

 country in which there seems always to have been a tendency to become depopulated. 

 Thus in a passage of the Siete Partidas, quoted in the Gran Consulta, it is said to be 

 part of the duty of the king to see that the population of places does not fall off. Even 

 the word despoblado suggests a different idea from that which is expressed by weald or 

 wilderness. It may be well to remark that there seems no reason to doubt that the 

 population of Spain is much greater now than it was in the 16th century, although for 

 a considerable time there must have been a decrease. Cassmany, in an interesting essay 

 on the subject, has shown how much exaggeration there is in the statements made by 

 Spanish writers of the 16th and 17th centuries, as to the population and manufacturing 

 industry of the country in earlier times. According to him the population reached its 

 minimum about 1 700. 



