During this period great increase of material wealth is noticeable. After the last peace with England, Spanish commerce revived; in 1805 one hundred and fifty thousand quintals of quicksilver were transported from Vera Cruz to Mexico for the mines, and during the same year more than twenty-seven millions of pesos were coined at the mint. But this epoch of opulence was soon to be terminated by fatal disasters, marked by bloodshed and ruin. A series of calamities, caused by foreign convulsions and misrule at home, was approaching Spain.
The Spanish government, involved under Godoy's rule in political difficulties, corruption, and extravagance, and harassed by the exorbitant demands of Napoleon, brought fresh discontent to the colonies by the adoption of a new method to draw from them the necessary funds to save the mother country from ruin. Spain's plight was desperate, and desperate must be the remedy, if, indeed, there was any. And woe in consequence must fall on Mexico!
It was decreed by royal order of December 26, 1804, to sequestrate all the real estate belonging to benevolent institutions,[1] chiefly under control of the clergy, including the sums, by far the greater part of their wealth, invested by them as loans on city and rural property, the mortgages on which had lapsed. The amounts collected were to be appropriated by the crown for the amortization of government bonds, the obligation being recognized by the payment of interest.[2] Though in Spain similar measures had been adopted,[3] the attendant circumstances were different from those in Mexico. In the Old World most of the church property consisted of real estate, which being sold, the clergy received a perpetual income from the
- ↑ Obras pias, or fundaciones piadosas.
- ↑ The sums were to be applied to the 'Caja de consolidacion de vales reales,' with interest to the respective benevolent institutions at 3 per cent, payable from the royal revenues. Cedulario, MS., i. 179-97.
- ↑ According to Real Cedula, Oct. 15, 1805, the amount of ecclesiastical property permitted by the pope to be sold under bull of June 14th of the same year was such as to yield in interest 320,000.
