royal domains was in part merely apparent, due to the
falling value of money, we may dismiss Habler's figure as too high.
And yet there is good evidence for the belief that there was a
considerable increment. The cities especially gained with the new
stimulus to {457} commerce and industry. In 1525 Toledo employed
10,000 workers in silk, who had increased fivefold by 1550.
Unfortunately for accuracy these figures are merely contemporary
guesses, but they certainly indicate a large growth in the population
of Toledo, and similar figures are given for Seville, Burgos and other
manufacturing and trading centers. From such estimates, however,
combined with the censuses of hearths, peculiarly unsatisfactory in
Spain as they excluded the privileged classes and were, as their
violent fluctuations show, carelessly made, we may arrive at the
conclusion that in 1557 the population of Spain was barely 9,000,000.

More difficult, if possible, is it to measure the amount of the decline
in the latter half of the century. [Sidenote: Decline] It was widely
noticed and commented on by contemporaries, who attributed it in part
to the increase in sheep-farming (as in England) and in part to
emigration to America. There were doubtless other more important and
more obscure causes, namely the increasing rivalry in both commerce and
industry of the north of Europe and the consequent decay of Spain's
means of livelihood. The emigration amounted on the average to perhaps
4000 per annum throughout the century. The total Spanish population of
America was reckoned by Velasco in 1574 at 30,500 households, or
152,500 souls. This would, however, imply a much larger emigration,
probably double the last number, to account for the many Spaniards lost
by the perils of the sea or in the depths of the wilderness. It is
known, for example, that whereas the Spanish population of Venezuela
was reckoned at 200 households at least 2000 Spaniards had gone to
settle there. An emigration of 300,000 before 1574, or say 400,000 for
the whole century, would have left a considerable gap at home. Add to
this the industrial decline by which {458} Altamira reckons that the
cities of the center and north, which suffered most, lost from one-half
to one-third of their total population, and it is evident that a very
considerable shrinkage took place. The census of 1594 reported a
population of 8,200,000.

[Sidenote: Portugal]

The same tendency to depopulatio