# Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican/Volume 1/Book 2/Chapter 1

Table of Contents
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Before we present the reader a brief sketch of the viceroyal government of New Spain, it may, in no small degree, contribute to the elucidation of this period if we review the Spanish colonial system that prevailed from the conquest to the revolution which resulted in independence.
As soon as the Spaniards had plundered the wealth accumulated by the Incas and the Aztecs in the semi-civilized empires of Mexico and Peru, they turned their attention to the government of the colonies which they saw springing up as if by enchantment. The allurements of gold and the enticements of a prolific soil, under delicious skies, had not yet ceased to inflame the ardent national fancy of Spain, so that an eager immigration escaped by every route to America. An almost regal and absolute power was vested by special grants from the king in the persons who were despatched from his court to found the first governments in the New World. But this authority was so abused by some of the ministerial agents that Charles V. took an early occasion to curb ​their power and diminish their original privileges. The Indian who had been divided with the lands among the conquerors by the slavish system of repartimientos, were declared to be the king's subjects. In 1537 the Pope issued a decree declaring the aborigines to be "really and truly men,"—"ipsos veros homines,"—who were capable of receiving the christian faith.
The sovereign was ever regarded from the first as the direct fountain of all authority throughout Spanish America. All his provinces were governed as colonies and and his word was their supreme law. In 1511, Ferdinand created a new governmental department for the control of his American subjects, denominated the Council of the Indies, but it was not fully organized until the reign of Charles the Fifth in 1524. The Recopilacion de las leyes de las Indias declared that this council should have supreme jurisdiction over all the Western Indies pertaining to the Spanish crown, which had been discovered, at that period, or which might thereafter be discovered;—that this jurisdiction should extend over all their interests and affairs; and, moreover, that the council, with the royal assent, should make all laws and ordinances, necessary for the welfare of those provinces. This Council of the Indies consisted of a president, who was the king, four secretaries and twenty-two counsellors, and the members were usually chosen from among those who had either been viceroys or held high stations abroad. It appointed all the officers employed in America in compliance with the nomination of the crown, and every one was responsible to it for his conduct. As soon as this political and legislative machine was created it began its scheme of law making for the colonies, not, however, upon principles of national right, but according to such dictates of expediency or profit as might accrue to the Spaniards. From time to time they were apprised of the wants of the colonists, but far separated as they were from the subject of their legislation, they naturally committed many errors in regard to a people with whom they had not the sympathy of a common country, and common social or industrial interests. They legislated either for abstractions or with the selfish view of working the colonies for the advantage of the Spanish crown rather than for the gradual and beautiful development of American capabilities. The mines of this continent first attracted the attention of Spain, and the prevailing principle of the scheme adopted in regard to them, was, that the mother country should ​produce the necessaries or luxuries of life for her colonial vassals, whilst they recompensed their parent with a bountiful revenue of gold and silver.
The bungling, blind, and often corrupt legislation of the Council of the Indies soon filled its records with masses of contradictory and useless laws, so that although there were many beneficent acts, designed especially for the comfort of the Indians, the administration of so confused a system became almost incompatible with justice. If the source of law was vicious its administration was not less impure. The principal courts of justice were the Audiencias reales, or Royal Audiences. In addition to the president,—who was the Viceroy, or Captain General,—the audiencia or court was composed of a regent, three judges, two fiscales or attorneys, (one for civil and the other for criminal cases) a reporter, and an alguazil, or constable. The members of these courts were appointed by the king himself, and, being almost without exception, natives of old Spain, they possessed but few sympathies for the colonists.
After the Royal Audiences, came the Cabildos whose members, consisting of regidores and other persons appointed by the king, and of two alcaldes annually elected by the regidores from among the people,—constituted a municipal body in almost every town or village of importance. These cabildos had no legislative jurisdiction, but superintended the execution of the laws within their districts and regulated all minor local matters. The office of regidor was a regular matter of bargain and sale; and, as the regidores subsequently elected the alcaldes, it will be seen that this admitted of great corruption, and tended to augment the direct oppression of the masses subjected to their jurisdiction. It was an instrument to increase the wealth and strengthen the tyrannical power of the rulers.
These ill regulated audiencias and cabildos, were, in themselves, capable of destroying all principles of just harmony, and were sufficient to corrupt the laws both in their enactment and administration. But all men were not equal before these tribunals. A system of fueros or privileges, opposed innumerable obstacles. These were the privileges of corporate bodies and of the professions; of the clergy, called public or common; and of the monks, canons, inquisitions, college, and universities; the privileges of persons employed in the royal revenue service; the general privileges of the military, which were extended also to the militia, and the especial privileges of the marines, of engineers, and of the ​artillery. An individual enjoying any of these privileges was elevated above the civil authority, and, whether as plaintiff or defendant, was subject only to the chief of the body to which he belonged, both in civil and criminal cases. So great a number of jurisdictions created an extricable labyrinth, which, by keeping up a ceaseless conflict between the chiefs in regard to the extent of their powers, stimulated each one to sustain his own authority at all hazards, and, with such resoluteness as to employ even force to gain his purpose. Bribery, intrigue, delay, denial of justice, outrage, ruin, were the natural results of such a system of complicated irresponsibility; and consequently it is not singular to find even now in Mexico and South America large masses of people who are utterly ignorant of the true principles upon which justice should be administered or laws enacted for its immaculate protection. The manifesto of independence issued by the Buenos Ayrean Congress in 1816, declares that all public offices belong exclusively to the Spaniards; and although the Americans were equally entitled to them by the laws, they were appointed only in rare instances, and even then, not without satiating the cupidity of the court by enormous sums of money. Of one hundred and seventy viceroys who governed on this continent but four were Americans; and of six hundred and ten Captains General and Governors, all but fourteen were natives of old Spain! Thus it is evident that not only were the Spanish laws bad in their origin, but the administrative system under which they operated denied natives of America in almost all cases the possibility of self government.
The evil schemes of Spain did not stop, however, with the enactment of laws, or their administration. The precious metals had originally tempted her, as we have already seen, and she did not fail to build up a commercial system which was at once to bind the colonists forever to the mines, whilst it enriched and excited her industry at home in arts, manufactures, agriculture, and navigation. As the Atlantic rolled between the old world and the new, America was excluded from all easy or direct means of intercourse with other states of Europe, especially at a period when the naval power of Spain was important, and frequent wars made the navigation of foreign merchantmen or smugglers somewhat dangerous in the face of her cruisers. Spain therefore interdicted all commercial intercourse between her colonies and the rest ​of the world, thus maintaining a strict monopoly of trade in her own hands. All imports and exports were conveyed in Spanish bottoms, nor was any vessel permitted to sail for Vera Cruz or Porto Bello, her only two authorized American ports, except from Seville, until the year 1720, when the trade was removed to Cadiz as a more convenient outlet. It was not until the War of the Succession that the trade of Peru was opened, and, even then, only to the French. By the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, Great Britain with the asiento, or contract for the supply of slaves, obtained a direct participation in the American trade, by virtue of a permission granted her to send a vessel of five hundred tons annually to the fair at Porto Bello. This privilege ceased with the partial hostilities in 1737, but Spain found herself compelled, on the restoration of peace in 1739, to make some provision for meeting the additional demand which the comparatively free communication with Europe had created. Licenses were granted, with this view, to vessels called register-ships, which were chartered during the intervals between the usual periods for the departure of the galleons. In 1764, a further improvement was made by the establishment of monthly packets to Havana, Porto Rico and Buenos Ayres, which were allowed to carry out half cargoes of goods. This was followed in 1774, by the removal of the interdict upon the intercourse of the colonies with each other; and, this again, in 1778, under what is termed a decree of free trade, by which seven of the principal ports of the peninsula were allowed to carry on a direct intercourse with Buenos Ayres and the South Sea. Up to the period when these civilized modifications of the original interdict were made, the colonists were forbidden to trade either with foreigners or with each other's states, under any pretext whatever. The penalty of disobedience and detection was death.
Having thus enacted that the sole vehicle of colonial commerce should be Spanish, the next effort of the paternal government was to make the things it conveyed Spanish also. As an adjunct in this system of imposition, the laws of the Indies prohibited the manufacture or cultivation in the colonies, of all those articles which could be manufactured or produced in Spain. Factories were therefore inhibited, and foreign articles were permitted to enter the viceroyalties, direct from Spain alone, where they were, of course, subjected to duty previous to re-exportation. But these foreign products were not allowed to be imported in unstinted quantities. Spain fixed both the amount and the price; so that by ​extorting, ultimately, from the purchaser, the government was a gainer in charges, profits and duties; whilst the merchants of Cadiz and Seville, who enjoyed the monopoly of trade, were enabled to affix any valuation they pleased to their commodities. The ingenuity of the Spaniards in contriving methods to exact the utmost farthing from their submissive colonists, is not a little remarkable. "They took advantage of the wants of the settlers, and were, at one time, sparing in their supplies, so that the price might be enhanced, whilst, at another, they sent goods of poor quality, at a rate much above their value, because it was known they must be purchased. It was a standing practice to despatch European commodities in such small quantities as to quicken the competition of purchasers and command an exorbitant profit. In the most flourishing period of the trade of Seville, the whole amount of shipping employed was less than twenty-eight thousand tons, and many of the vessels made no more than annual voyages. The evident motive on the part of the crown for limiting the supply was, that the same amount of revenue could be more easily levied, and collected with more certainty as well as despatch, on a small than on a large amount of goods."
Whilst the commerce of Spain was thus burdened by enormous impositions, the colonies were of course cramped in all their energies. There could be no independent action of trade, manufacture, or even agriculture, under such a system.
America,—under the tropics and in the temperate regions, abounding in a prolific soil,—was not allowed to cultivate the grape or the olive, whilst, even some kinds of provisions which could easily have been produced on this continent were imported from Spain.
Such were some of the selfish and unnatural means by which the Council of the Indies,—whose laws have been styled, by some writers, beneficent—sought to drain America of her wealth, whilst they created a market for Spain. This was the external code of oppression; but the internal system of this continent, which was justified and enacted by the same council, was not less odious. Taxation, without representation or self government, was the foundation of our revolt; yet, the patient colonies of Spain were forced to bear it from the beginning of their career, so that the idea of freedom, either of opinion or of impost, never entered the minds of an American Creole.
Duties, taxes, and tithes were the vexatious instruments of royal ​plunder. The alcabala, an impost upon all purchases and sales, including even the smallest transactions, was perhaps the most burthensome. "Every species of merchandise, whenever it passed from one owner to another, was subject to a new tax; and merchants, shopkeepers and small dealers, were obliged to report the amount of their purchases and sales under oath." From the acquisition of an estate, to the simple sale of butter, eggs, or vegetables in market, all contracts and persons were subject to this tax, except travellers, clergymen and paupers. Independently of the destruction of trade, which must always ensue from such a system, the reader will at once observe the temptations to vice opened by it. The natural spirit of gain tempts a dealer to cheat an oppressive government by every means in his power. It is therefore not wonderful to find the country filled with contrabandists, and the towns with dishonest tradesmen. Men who defraud in acts, will lie in words, nor will they hesitate to conceal their infamy under the sanction of an oath. Thus was it that the oppressive taxation of Spain became the direct instrument of popular corruption, and, by extending imposts to the minutest ramifications of society, it made the people smugglers, cheats, and perjurers. In addition to the alcabala, there were transit duties through the country, under which, it has been alleged, that European articles were sometimes taxed thirty times before they reached their consumer. The king had his royal fifth of all the gold and silver, and his monopolies of tobacco, salt and gunpowder. He often openly vended the colonial offices, both civil and ecclesiastical. He stamped paper, and derived a revenue from its sale. He affixed a poll tax on every Indian; and, finally, by the most infamous of all impositions, he derived an extensive revenue from the religious superstition of the people. It was not enough to tax the necessaries and luxuries of life,—things actually in existence and tangible,—but, through a refined alchemy of political invention, he managed to coin even the superstitions of the people, and add to the royal income by the sale of "Bulls de cruzada,"—"Bulls de defuntos,"—"Bulls for eating milk and eggs during lent"—and "Bulls of composition." Bales upon bales of these badly printed licenses were sent out from Spain and sold by priests under the direction of a commissary. The villany of this scheme may be more evident if we detain the reader a moment in order to describe the character of these spiritual licenses. Whoever possessed a "Bull de cruzada" might be absolved from all crimes except heresy; nor, could he be suspected even of so deadly a sin, ​as long as this talismanic paper was in his possession. Besides this, it exempted him from many of the rigorous fasts of the church; while two of them, of course, possessed double the virtue of one. The "Bull for the dead" was a needful passport for a sinner's soul from purgatory. There was no escape without it from the satanic police, and the poor and ignorant classes suffered all the pains of their miserable friends who had gone to the other world, until they were able to purchase the inestimable ticket of release. But of all these wretched impostures, the "Bull of composition" was, probably, the most shameful as well as dangerous. It "released persons who had stolen goods from the obligation to restore them to the owner, provided the thief had not been moved to commit his crime in consequence of a belief that he might escape from its sin by subsequently purchasing the immaculate 'Bull.'" Nor were these all the virtues of this miraculous document. It had the power to "correct the moral offence of false weights and measures; tricks and frauds in trade; all the obliquities of principle and conduct by which swindlers rob honest folks of their property; and, finally, whilst it converted stolen articles into the lawful property of the thief, it also assured to purchasers the absolute ownership of whatever they obtained by modes that ought to have brought them to the gallows. The price of these Bulls depended on the amount of goods stolen; but it is just to add, that only fifty of them could be taken by the same person in a year."
These disgusting details might suffice to show the student how greatly America was oppressed and corrupted by the Spanish government; yet we regret that there are other important matters of misrule which we are not authorised to pass by unnoticed. Thus far we have considered the direct administration and taxing power of the king and Council of the Indies; we must now turn to the despotism exercised over the mind as well as the body of the Creoles.
The holy church held all its appointments directly from the king, though the pope enjoyed the privilege of nomination; consequently the actual influence and power of the Hispano-American church, rested in the sovereign. The Recopilacion de las leyes expressly prohibits the erection of cathedrals, parish churches, monasteries, hospitals, native chapels, or other pious or religious ​edifices, without the express license of the monarch. As all the ecclesiastical revenues went to him, his power and patronage were immense. The religious jurisdiction of the church tribunals extended to monasteries, priests, donations, or legacies for sacred purposes, tithes, marriages, and all spiritual concerns. The fueros of the clergy have been already alluded to. "Instead of any restraint on the claims of the ecclesiastics," says Dr. Robertson, "the inconsistent zeal of the Spanish legislators admitted them into America to their full extent, and, at once imposed on the Spanish colonies a burden which is in no slight degree oppressive to society in its most improved state. As early as 1501 the payment of tithes as it was called, in the colonies was enjoined, and the mode of it regulated by law. Every article of primary necessity towards which the attention of settlers must naturally be turned was submitted to that grievous exaction. Nor were the demands of the clergy confined to articles of simple and easy culture. Its more artificial and operose productions, such as sugar, indigo, and cochineal, were declared to be titheable, and, in this manner, the planter's industry was taxed in every stage of its progress from its rudest essay to its highest improvement." Thus it is that even now, after all the desolating revolutions that have occurred, we see the wealth of the Mexican church so exorbitantly exceeding that of the richest lay proprietors. The clergy readily became the royal agents in this scheme of aggrandizement; convent after convent was built; estate after estate was added to their possessions; dollar after dollar, and diamond after diamond were cast into their gorged treasuries, until their present accumulations are estimated at a sum not far beneath one hundred millions. The monasteries of the Dominicans and Carmelites possess immense riches, chiefly in real estate both in town and country; whilst the convents of nuns in the city of Mexico,—especially those of Concepcion, Encarnacion and Santa Terasa,—are owners of three-fourths of the private houses in the capital, and proportionably, of property in the different states of the republic.
Wherever the church of Rome obtained a foothold in the sixteenth century the Holy Inquisition was not long in asserting and establishing its power. Unfortunately for the zealots of this monastic tribunal, the ignorance of the Indians did not permit ​them to wander into the mazes of heresy, so that the Dominican monks found but slender employment for their cruel skill. The poor aborigines were hardly worth the trouble of persecution, for the conquerors had already plundered them, and, unfortunately, the Jews did not emigrate to the wilds of America. The inquisition, however, could not restrain its natural love of labor, so, that, diverting its attention from the bodies of its victims it devoted itself, with the occasional recreation of an auto da fe, to the spiritual guardianship of Spanish and Indian intellects. Education was of course modified and repressed by such baneful influences. Men dared neither learn nor read, except what was selected for them by the monks. At the end of the eighteenth century there were but three presses in Spanish America,—one in Mexico, one in Lima, and one which belonged to the Jesuits at Cordova; but these presses were designed for the use of the government alone in the dissemination of its decrees. The eye of the inquisition was of course jealously directed to all publications. Booksellers were bound to furnish the Holy Fathers annually with a list of their merchandise, and the fraternity was empowered to enter wheresoever it pleased, to seek and seize prohibited literature. Luther, Calvin, Vattel, Montesquieu, Puffendorff, Robertson, Addison, and even the Roman Catholic Fenelon, were all proscribed. The inquisition was the great censor of the press, and nothing was submitted to the people unless it had passed the fiery ordeal of the holy office. It was quite enough for a book to be wise, classical, or progressive, to subject it to condemnation. Even viceroys and governors were forbidden to license the publication of a work unless the inquisition sanctioned it; and we have seen volumes in Mexico, still kept as curiosities in private libraries, out of which pages were torn and passages obliterated by the Holy Fathers, before they were permitted to be sold.
Inasmuch as the Indians formed the great bulk of Hispano-American population, the king, of course, soon after the discovery, directed his attention to their capabilities for labor. We have seen in a previous part of this chapter that by a system of repartimientos they were divided among the conquerors and made vassals of the land holders, although always kept distinct from the negroes who were afterwards imported from Africa. Although the Emperor Charles V., enacted a number of mild laws for the amelioration of their fate, their condition seems, nevertheless, to have been very little improved,—according to our personal observation,—even to ​the present day. We have noticed that a capitation tax was levied on every Indian, and that it varied in different parts of Spanish America, from four to fifteen dollars, according to the ability of the Indians. They were likewise doomed to labor on the public works, as well as to cultivate the soil for the general benefit of the country, whilst by the imposition of the mita they were forced to toil in the mines under a rigorous and debasing system which the world believed altogether unequalled in mineral districts until the British parliamentary reports of a few years past disclosed the fact, that even in England, men and women are sometimes degraded into beasts of burden in the mines whose galleries traverse in every direction the bowels of that proud kingdom. Toils and suffering were the natural conditions of the poor Indian in America after the conquest, and it might have been supposed that the plain dictates of humanity would make the Spaniards content with the labor of their serfs, without attempting afterwards, to rob them of the wages of such ignominious labor. But even in this, the Spanish ingenuity and avarice were not to be foiled, for the corregidores in the towns and villages, to whom were granted the minor monopolies of almost all the necessaries of life, made this a pretext of obliging the Indians to purchase what they required at the prices they chose to affix to their goods. Monopoly—was the order of the day in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its oppressions extended through all ranks, and its grasping advantages were eagerly seized by every magistrate from the alguazil to the viceroy. The people groaned, but paid the burthensome exaction, whilst the relentless officer, hardened by the contemplation of misery, and the constant commission of legalized robbery, only became more watchful, sagacious and grinding in proportion as he discovered how much the down-trodden masses could bear. Benevolent viceroys and liberal kings, frequently interposed to prevent the continuance of these unjust acts, but they were unable to cope with the numerous officials who performed all the minor ministerial duties throughout the colony. These inferior agents, in a new and partially unorganized country, had every advantage in their favor over the central authorities in the capital. The poorer Spaniards and the Indian serfs had no means of making their complaints heard in the palace. There was no press or public opinion to give voice to the sorrows of the masses, and personal fear often silenced the few who might have reached the ear of merciful and just rulers. At court, the rich, powerful ​and influential miners or land holders, always discovered pliant tools who were ready by intrigue and corruption to smother the cry of discontent, or to account plausibly for the murmurs, which upon extraordinary occasions, burst through all restraints until they reached either the Audiencia or the representative of the sovereign. These slender excuses may, in some degree, account for and palliate the maladministration of Spanish America from the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The ensuing chapters of this book contain the annals of New Spain from the foundation of the viceroyal system to the beginning of the revolution that grew out of its corruptions. The materials for this portion of Mexican history are exceedingly scant. During the jealous despotism and ecclesiastical vigilance of old Spanish rule, and the anarchy of modern miscalled republicanism, few authors have ventured to penetrate the gloom of this mysterious period. The Jesuit Father Cavo, and Don Carlos Maria Bustamante have alone essayed to narrate, consecutively, the events of the viceroyalty; and although no student of the past is attracted by their crude and careless style, yet we may confidently rely on the characteristic facts detailed in their tedious work.
* ↑ Recop. de las leyes, lib. 2, title 2, ley 2.
* ↑ Mendez, Observaciones sobre les leyes de Indias y sobre la independencia de America. London, 1823. p. 174.
* ↑ Ward's Mexico in 1827, vol. 1, p. 116.
* ↑ North American Review, vol. xix p. 117.
* ↑ See Pazo's letters on South America, pages 88, 89, North American Review, art. antec, pages 186 and 187, et Depons.
* ↑ Recopilacion, lib. i, Tit. vi, Ley 2, North American Review, art. antec. p. 189.
* ↑ Robertson's Hist, of Amer.; Zavala Hist. Revo, of Mexico.
* ↑ Otero, Cuestion social, pages 38, 39, 43.
* ↑ Zavala Hist. Revo, de Mexico, pages 16, 17, vol. 1.
* ↑ See Zavala, vol. 1, p. 52.
* ↑ See British Parliamentary Report on the condition of the miners and mining districts
* ↑ "Los Tres Siglos de Mejico, durante el Gobierno Espanol," 1521 to 1766, written by Father Andres Cavo, of the Society of Jesus; 1767 to 1821, written by Don Carlos Maria Bustamante.