CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.

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