e commerce of the
colonies should be a monopoly in the hands of the crown. The regulation
of this commerce was entrusted to the Board of Trade, established at
Seville.

This board granted a license to any vessel bound to America, and
inspected its cargo. The entire commerce with the colonies centred in
Seville, and continued there until 1720. It was carried on in a uniform
manner for more than two centuries. A fleet with a strong convoy sailed
annually for America. The fleet consisted of two divisions, one destined
for Carthagena and Porto Bello, the other for Vera Cruz. At those points
all the trade and treasure of Spanish America from California to the
Straits of Magellan, was concentrated, the products of Peru and Chili
being conveyed annually by sea to Panama, and from thence across the
isthmus to Porto Bello, part of the way on mules, and part of the way
down the Chagres river. The storehouses of Porto Bello, now a decayed and
miserable town, retaining no shadow of former greatness, were filled with
merchandise, and its streets thronged with opulent merchants drawn from
distant provinces. Upon the arrival of the fleet a fair was opened,
continuing for forty days, during which the most extensive commercial
transactions took place, and the rich cargoes of the galleons were all
marketed, and the specie and staples of the colonies received in payment
to be conveyed to Spain. The same exchange occurred at Vera Cruz, and
both squadrons having taken in their return cargoes, rendezvoused at
Havana, and sailed from thence to Europe. Such was the stinted, fettered
and restricted commerce which subsisted between Spain and her possessions
in America for more than two centuries and a half, and such were the
swaddling clothes which bound the youthful limbs of the Spanish colonies,
retarding their growth and keeping them in a condition of abject
dependence. The effect was most injurious to Spain as well as to the
colonies. The naval superiority of the English and Dutch enabled them in
time of war to cut off intercourse between Spain and America, and thereby
deprive Spanish-Americans of the necessaries as well as the luxuries for
which they depended upon Spain, and an extensive smuggling trade grew up
which no efforts on the part of the authorities could repress. Monopoly
was starved out through the very rigor exerted to make it exclusive, and
the markets were so glutted with contraband goods that the galleons could
scarcely dispo