personal slavery, the natives
were required, as vassals of the crown, to pay a personal tax or tribute
in the form of personal service. They were also put under the protection
of great landholders, who treated them as serfs, although not exacting
continuous labor, so that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the condition of the Indians did not greatly improve.

Notwithstanding the avidity of the first Spanish adventurers for the
precious metals, and the ardor with which they pursued their researches,
their exertions were attended for a number of years with but little
success. It was not until 1545 that the rich mines of Potosi, in Peru,
were accidentally discovered by an Indian in clambering up the mountain.
This was soon followed by the discovery of other highly productive mines
of gold and silver in the various provinces, and Spanish America began to
pour a flood of wealth into the coffers of Spain. The mines were not
operated by the crown, but by individual enterprise, the crown receiving
a share of the proceeds, and alloting a certain number of Indians to the
mine-owners as laborers. These Indians did all the work of the mine
without the aid of machinery, and with very little assistance from
horse-power. Their industry enriched Spain and her colonies to a degree
unexampled in the previous experience of mankind.

* * *

Silver and gold, however, did not bring lasting prosperity. Already in
the early part of the seventeenth century Spain showed signs of decay.
Her manufactures and commerce began to decline; men could not be
recruited to keep up her fleets and armies, and even agriculture felt the
blight of national degeneracy. The great emigration to the colonies
drained off the energetic element of the population and the immense
riches which the colonies showered upon Spain intoxicated the people and
led them to desert the accustomed paths of industry. Nineteen-twentieths
of the commodities exported to the Spanish colonies were foreign fabrics,
paid for by the products of the mines, so that the gold and silver no
sooner entered Spain than they passed away into the hands of foreigners,
and the country was left without sufficient of the precious metals for a
circulating medium.

Although wholly unable to supply the wants of her colonies Spain did not
relax in the smallest degree the rigor of her colonial system, the
controlling principle of which was that the whol