In the Spanish colonies the enactments of the Court of Spain were far
more rigorously carried out. Here, since the laws were so strict, the
rewards for their breaking were naturally all the greater. Tempted by
the magnitude of these latter, a great number of the officials made a
lucrative profession of giving clandestine assistance to foreign
commerce in direct contravention of the regulations laid down.

It is rather curious to remark that at the very height of her colonial
commerce, when the riches of South America were pouring at the greatest
rate into her coffers, how little actual wealth was accumulated by the
Mother Country. Indeed, a monumental proof of the inefficiency of her
organization is that, although she bled the filial nations with an
almost incredible enthusiasm, Spain remained in debt. The influx of gold
from her colonies demoralized and ruined such industries as she had
possessed, and such goods as she sent out to South America and elsewhere
were now almost devoid of any proportion of her own manufactures. The
merchandise which she sent to the New World she purchased from other
countries, principally from Great Britain, and the English merchants saw
to it that their profit was no small one. Thus Spain at this period,
from a mercantile point of view, was very reluctantly serving as a
general benefactor to Europe.

All this, of course, was in spite of most extraordinary efforts to
effect the contrary. As early as 1503 the Casa de Contratacion de las
Indias had been established in Spain. This institution was practically
the governing body of the colonies. It possessed numerous commercial
privileges, since it held the monopoly of the colonial trade. These
privileges were continued until as late as 1790.

The Casa de Contratacion, although in many respects a purely mercantile
body, was endowed with special powers. So wide was its authority that to
be associated with this body was wont to prove of enormous financial
benefit. Thus, it was entitled to make its own laws, and it was
specially enacted by Royal Decree that these were to be obeyed by all
Spanish subjects as implicitly as any others of the nation.

So far as the commercial world was concerned, the powers of the Casa de
Contratacion were sheerly autocratic. The institution, in fact, held the
fortunes of all the colonials in its hand. It possessed, in the first
place, the privilege of naming the price which the inhabitants of the
New World shou