60 



SPANISH TAXES AND OTHER OPPRESSIONS. 



As an important branch of the executive go- 

 vernment, it may be mentioned, that the exactions 

 in the shape of taxes, tithes, and duties, were 

 levied with a degree of severity unknown in any 

 country except, perhaps, in Spain. The duties 

 on the precious metals at the mouth of the mine, 

 though latterly much reduced, by the impossibility 

 of collecting the nominal amount, were, to the 

 last hour of Spanish authority, a great and for- 

 midable impediment to industry. Tobacco, salt, 

 gunpowder, and quicksilver, were close royal 

 monopolies, the effect of which exclusion was not 

 only to prevent the people from having an ade- 

 quate supply of these articles, even at an immensely 

 augmented price, but to deprive the government 

 of a large revenue, which they might have obtained 

 by a wiser system. 



The horrible Alcavala, the most vexatious of 

 taxes, as it is levied ad infinitum upon every 

 transfer of goods, pressed heavily upon all classes. 

 Nothing escaped the tithes, and every individual 

 in the country was compelled annually to purchase 

 a certain number of the Pope's bulls, under a 

 penalty of forfeiting various important advantages. 

 A man, for instance, who had not in his possession 

 the " Bula de Confession," could not receive abso- 

 lution on his death-bed ; his will became invalid, 

 and his property was confiscated. 



Every stage of legal proceedings was in the 

 most deplorable state that can possibly be con- 

 ceived. The administration of justice, which, 

 even in the best-regulated governments, is so 

 liable to delay and individual hardship, had, in 

 South America, scarcely any existence whatever. 

 There were forms enough, and writings enough, 

 and long imprisonments without number ; but I 

 never yet met a single individual, either Spaniard 

 or American, in any of those countries, who did 

 not freely admit, that substantial justice was in 

 no case to be looked for, even where the govern- 

 ment had no interest in the event. What chance 

 any one had when his cause involved a political 

 question, it is needless to say. Imprisonment, 

 that bitter torture, was the grand recipe for 

 everything ; — " Sir," said a man to me, who knew 

 well, from long experience, what it was to be 

 engaged in a South American law-suit, " they put 

 you into prison, whatever the case be ; they turn 

 the key, and never think more of you." At the 

 capture of Lima, the dungeons were found filled 

 with prisoners long forgotten by the courts, and 

 against whom no charge was upon record. The 

 following extract from the Biblioteca Americana, 

 No. 3, (a periodical work recently published in 

 London,) puts this branch of the subject in a 

 strong light : — 



u In America, as well as in Spain, there were 

 collected together, in obscure, humid, and infected 

 dungeons, men and women, young and old, guilty 

 and innocent ; the hardened in crime, along with 

 those who had erred for the first time ; the patriot 

 and the murderer ; the simple debtor with the 

 most determined robber, all were confounded 

 together. The filth, the wretched fare, the naked 

 ground, the irons, were all in South America the 

 same, or even worse than those of Spain. The 

 alcalde, generally taken from the dregs of the 

 people, was a kind of sultan ; and his satellites 

 90 many liashas, to whose severe and capricious 



decrees the unhappy prisoners were compelled to 

 submit, without appeal. It is impossible to paint 

 in colours sufficiently vivid the miseries to which 

 all prisoners were subjected, or the inhumanity 

 with which they were treated by their keepers. 

 They were stripped of everything, deprived of all 

 motive to exertion, — occasionally put to the torture, 

 to confess imaginary crimes, and in all the prisons 

 corporal punishment was allowed. Such was the 

 state of the prisons all over South America during 

 the dominion of the Spaniards. A Chilian writer, 

 since the revolution, describes with great energy 

 the pernicious effects of this system in that country. 

 ' Among us,' he says, ' a man was imprisoned, 

 not that he might be improved, but that he might 

 be made to suffer,- — not that he should work, but 

 that he should learn idleness, — not as a useful 

 warning to others, but to shock their feelings. 

 On visiting a prison, we beheld several hundreds 

 of men in rags, or entirely naked, — their counte- 

 nances withered away, so that they were more 

 like spectres in chains than men : they trembled 

 at the presence of the insolent alguazil, who struck 

 and insulted them. We examined the food of 

 these miserable wretches, worn to skeletons, and 

 it proved such as the lowest beggar in the streets 

 would have rejected with disgust.' " 



In Lima, where the population was upwards of 

 seventy thousand, there were only two small 

 prisons ; and the want of room aggravated the 

 other miseries of the captives beyond all concep- 

 tion. But the most horrible of all prisons was 

 invented in Lima during the viceroyalty of Abascal. 

 " These were subterranean dungeons, constructed 

 in such a manner that a man could not place 

 himself in any natural position whatever. Many 

 persons, victims of despotism, were confined in 

 these holes for years ; and when at length let out, 

 it was only to bewail their own existence, being 

 rendered useless and helpless for the rest of their 

 lives ; crippled, and liable to acute pains and 

 diseases of an incurable nature." The public 

 gave the name of little hells (infiernillos) to these 

 places, and they were allowed to exist in Lima 

 fully a year after the Spanish constitution had 

 been proclaimed. I was in Lima at the time 

 they were abolished by a public decree, dated the 

 19th of December 1821. San Martin, on the 

 15th of October 1821, visited in person the 

 prisons of Lima, accompanied by the judges and 

 other public officers, who furnished a list of all the 

 prisoners, with an account of the crimes alleged 

 against them. He listened patiently to what each 

 prisoner had to say, and at once ordered a great 

 number to be liberated, who had been wantonly 

 placed there, without any sufficient charge, — 

 directed proper provisions in future to be sup- 

 plied to those who remained, — and appointed a 

 commission, who were ordered to hear and deter- 

 mine the whole of the cases within the space of 

 twenty days, though many of them had been stand- 

 ing for several years. The most admirable regu- 

 lations were afterwards established respecting the 

 prisons of Lima. 



