SPANISH EXPERIMENTS IN COINAGE. 581 



The situation was growing insupportable. Commerce and in- 

 dustry were equally stagnant. No land in Europe had greater 

 resources than Spain in the fine wools of Castile, Aragon, and La 

 Mancha ; the flax and hemp of Asturias, Catalonia, Galicia, and 

 Leon ; the excellent silk of Murcia and Valencia ; the iron, steel, 

 and timber of Navarre, Guipuscoa and Biscay ; the wines and 

 fruits of Andalusia ; but these were all exported as raw materi- 

 als, and though the trade of the Indies was a jealous monopoly, 

 half the goods sent thither in the fleets were the property of Hol- 

 landers, under the names of Spaniards, although Spain was at war 

 with Holland. Partly this was attributable to the disordered cur- 

 rency, and the communities throughout the Peninsula supplicated 

 the crown for relief. There was but one way to obtain this by 

 retracing the vicious course of the last half century, and the at- 

 tempt was heroically made. By a pragmatica of August 7, 1628, 

 it was decreed that after the day of publication all the velldn 

 money should be reduced one half in value. To diminish the loss 

 to the holders a complicated arrangement was ordered, by which 

 one half of the depreciation should be made good to them by their 

 towns and villages, and in view of the sacrifice thus imposed on 

 the nation the royal faith was solemnly pledged by Philip IV, 

 for himself and his successors, with all the force of a compact be- 

 tween the crown and the people, that the value of the vel!6n coin- 

 age should never again be tampered with, either to raise or to 

 depress it. After this, any transaction disturbing the parity of 

 the various coinages was declared an offense subject to the severest 

 punishment and to render the measure effective the sternest 

 penalties were directed against the introduction into the king- 

 dom of foreign velldn money. The profits on this had already 

 called forth the most vigorous efforts of repression, and these 

 were now sharpened by declaring it to be a matter of Use majeste, 

 and subjecting it to the pains of heresy death by fire, confisca- 

 tion of all property, and disabilities inflicted on descendants to 

 the second generation. Any vessel bringing it, even without the 

 knowledge of the master, was forfeited ; an unsuccessful attempt 

 to import it was punished with death, and knowledge of such 

 attempt without denouncing it incurred the galleys and confisca- 

 tion. For a while, in fact, the crime was made justiciable by the 

 Inquisition, which was a tribunal inspiring far greater popular 

 dread than the ordinary courts. Evidently the law-making 

 power in Spain had few scruples, and no constitutional limita- 

 tions in its control over the currency. 



Yet with all its power it might as well have attempted to con- 

 trol the tides or the winds, and the solemn pledges of the throne 

 were not worth the paper on which they were printed. Richelieu 

 was pressing Spain hard, and the condition of Spanish finance 



