If Europe has
derived so many advantages from the American trade, it seems natural to
imagine that Spain must have derived much greater.
[147]
She drew from
the newly- discovered world so prodigious a quantity of gold and silver,
that all we had before could not be compared with it.
But (what one could never have expected) this great kingdom was
everywhere baffled by its misfortunes. Philip II, who succeeded Charles
V, was obliged to make the celebrated bankruptcy known to all the world.
There never was a prince who suffered more from the murmurs, the
insolence, and the revolt of troops constantly ill-paid.
From that time the monarchy of Spain has been incessantly declining.
This has been owing to an interior and physical defect in the nature of
those riches, which renders them vain — a defect which increases every
day.
Gold and silver are either a fictitious or a representative wealth.
The representative signs of wealth are extremely durable, and, in their
own nature, but little subject to decay. But the more they are
multiplied, the more they lose their value, because the fewer are the
things which they represent.
The Spaniards, after the conquest of Mexico and Peru, abandoned
their natural riches, in pursuit of a representative wealth which daily
degraded itself. Gold and silver were extremely scarce in Europe, and
Spain becoming all of a sudden mistress of a prodigious quantity of
these metals, conceived hopes to which she had never before aspired. The
wealth she found in the conquered countries, great as it was, did not,
however, equal that of their mines. The Indians concealed part of it;
and besides, these people, who made no other use of gold and silver than
to give magnificence to the temples of their gods and to the palaces of
their kings, sought not for it with an avarice like ours. In short, they
had not the secret of drawing these metals from every mine; but only
from those in which the separation might be made with fire: they were
strangers to the manner of making use of mercury, and perhaps to mercury
itself.
However, it was not long before the specie of Europe was doubled;
this appeared from the price of commodities, which everywhere was
doubled.
The Spaniards raked into the mines, scooped out mountains, invented
machines to draw out water, to break the ore, and separate it; and as
they sported with the lives of the Indians, they forced them to labour
without mercy. The specie of Europe soon doubled, and the profit of
Spain diminished in the same proportion; they had every year the same
quantity of metal, which had become by one-half less precious.
In double the time the specie still doubled, and the profit still
diminished another half.
It diminished even more than half: let us see in what manner.
To extract the gold from the mines, to give it the requisite
preparations, and to import it into Europe, must be attended with some
certain expense. I will suppose this to be as 1 to 64. When the specie
was once doubled, and consequently became by one-half less precious, the
expense was as 2 to 64. Thus the galoons which brought to Spain the same
quantity of gold, brought a thing which really was of less value by
one-half, though the expenses attending it had been twice as high.
If we proceed doubling and doubling, we shall find in this
progression the cause of the impotency of the wealth of Spain.
It is about two hundred years since they have worked their Indian
mines. I suppose the quantity of specie at present in the trading world
is to that before the discovery of the Indies as 32 is to 1; that is, it
has been doubled five times: in two hundred years more the same quantity
will be to that before the discovery as 64 is to 1; that is, it will be
doubled once more. Now, at present, fifty quintals of ore yield four,
five, and six ounces of gold;
[148]
and when it yields only two, the
miner receives no more from it than his expenses. In two hundred years,
when the miner will extract only four, this too will only defray his
charges. There will then be but little profit to be drawn from the gold
mines. The same reasoning will hold good of silver, except that the
working of the silver mines is a little more advantageous than those of
gold.
But, if mines should be discovered so fruitful as to give a much
greater profit, the more fruitful they may be, the sooner the profit
will cease.
The Portuguese in Brazil have found mines of gold so rich
[149]
that
they must necessarily very soon make a considerable diminution in the
profits of those of Spain, as well as in their
I have frequently heard people deplore the blindness of the court of
France, who repulsed Christopher Columbus, when he made the proposal of
discovering the Indies. Indeed they did, though perhaps without design,
an act of the greatest wisdom. Spain has behaved like the foolish king
who desired that everything he touched might be converted into gold, and
who was obliged to beg of the gods to put an end to his misery.
The companies and banks established in many nations have put a
finishing stroke to the lowering of gold and silver as a sign of
representation of riches; for by new fictions they have multiplied in
such a manner the signs of wealth, that gold and silver having this
office only in part have become less precious.
Thus public credit serves instead of mines, and diminishes the
profit which the Spaniards drew from theirs.
True it is that the Dutch trade to the East Indies has increased, in
some measure, the value of the Spanish merchandise: for as they carry
bullion, and give it in exchange for the merchandise of the East, they
ease the Spaniards of part of a commodity which in Europe abounds too
much.
And this trade, in which Spain seems to be only indirectly
concerned, is as advantageous to that nation as to those who are
directly employed in carrying it on.
From what has been said we may form a judgment of the last order of
the council of Spain, which prohibits the making use of gold and silver
in gildings, and other superfluities; a decree as ridiculous as it would
be for the states of Holland to prohibit the consumption of spices.
My reasoning does not hold good against all mines; those of Germany
and Hungary, which produce little more than the expense of working them,
are extremely useful. They are found in the principal state; they employ
many thousand men, who there consume their superfluous commodities, and
they are properly a manufacture of the country.
The mines of Germany and Hungary promote the culture of land; the
working of those of Mexico and Peru destroys it.
The Indies and Spain are two powers under the same master; but the
Indies are the principal, while Spain is only an accessory, it is in
vain for politics to attempt to bring back the principal to the
accessory; the Indies will always draw Spain to themselves.
Of the merchandise, to the value of about fifty millions of livres,
annually sent to the Indies, Spain furnishes only two millions and a
half: the Indies trade for fifty millions, the Spaniards for two and a
half.
That must be a bad kind of riches which depends on accident, and not
on the industry of a nation, on the number of its inhabitants, and on
the cultivation of its lands. The king of Spain, who receives great sums
from his custom-house at Cadiz, is in this respect only a rich
individual in a state extremely poor. Everything passes between
strangers and himself, while his subjects have scarcely any share in it;
this commerce is independent both of the good and bad fortune of his
kingdom.
Were some provinces of Castile able to give him a sum equal to that
of the custom-house of Cadiz, his power would be much greater; his
riches would be the effect of the wealth of the country; these provinces
would animate all the others, and they would be altogether more capable
of supporting their respective charges; instead of a great treasury he
would have a great people.
