APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



SEPTEMBER, 1897. 

 SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 



BY HENRY CHARLES LEA. 



MUCH instructive research, has of late years been devoted to 

 the history and inevitable results of paper inflation. The 

 French assignats, our own continental money, colonial overissues, 

 and the practically irredeemable currency of the banks of some 

 of the States prior to the civil war have furnished subjects for 

 elaborate discussion and have yielded their appropriate warnings ; 

 but I am not aware that the most remarkable and significant of 

 all attempts to create and sustain fiat money has ever received 

 the attention which is its due. I term it the most remarkable 

 because it was made with coin and not with paper, and the vitiated 

 currency was comparatively small in amount, because it was car- 

 ried on for more than two centuries with true Spanish persistency, 

 and because it permanently and disastrously affected the desti- 

 nies of a great nation. Many causes contributed to the decadence 

 of Spain, but, after the expulsion of the Jews and Moors, none 

 perhaps did more to destroy its industry and commerce than its 

 vicious currency legislation. The story is a long one, and I can 

 here touch only on its more salient points. If some of the meas- 

 ures adopted should seem incredibly violent, it must be borne in 

 mind that they were the devices, not of rude and unlettered sav- 

 ages, but of the best trained and most experienced statesmen of 

 the land vainly seeking to escape the consequences of the first 

 fatal step in the wrong direction. The lesson taught is the more 

 impressive from the fact that, in the sixteenth century, Spain was 

 by far the richest and most powerful state in Europe, practically 

 owning Italy through her hold on Naples, Milan, Sicily, Sardinia, 

 and Corsica, and mistress of the wealthy provinces of the Nether- 



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