in or profit, as they will have
no profit with the said two per cent. And it would not be right or
expedient, for the sake of the said new imposition (since the reasons
and motives for it are lacking, as above stated), to place the income
and value of the said customs duties in danger and peril, as it is so
great and considerable, or to risk that of the other three per cent
of the said year 611--the one dependent on and inseparable from the
other; for, beyond all doubt, both would fail if the said commerce
failed or diminished. The said danger can be regarded as certain,
both for the abandonment of the said commerce and of the colony of
those islands; and that would allow the Dutch, who are so powerful
in the surrounding islands, as above stated, to gain an entrance in
them, for the lack of troops caused by the said imposition. That is a
matter which your Majesty should have examined with great attention,
because of the many precedents that have been seen in like cases in
these kingdoms [_i.e._, of Espana] with the great injury and loss to
the royal treasury which could not be restored later--as happened
in the increase [of the tax] on playing cards, one real more than
the usual tax being imposed. That income, being valued at that said
time at from forty-four to forty-five million maravedis annually in
the three districts of Castilla, Toledo, and Andalucia, dropped to
twenty-two millions because of the new imposition, thereby losing a
like sum annually. And, although the damage was afterward seen, and the
attempt was made to correct it by repealing the said new imposition,
and reducing the tax to the old amount, the amendment did not follow;
for because of the frauds and cheats caused by the said income in its
first condition, it never returned to that condition, and remained with
the annual loss and decrease of fourteen million maravedis from what it
had at the time of the said new imposition. The same thing happened in
the thirty per cent which was imposed on the trade of foreign merchants
while the court was in Valladolid. The result of that was that the
foreign merchants abandoned the commerce, and looked for new methods,
applying themselves to gaining a foothold in the Eastern Indias. The
said imposition was thus the reason for the many important lands and
ports of which the foreigners have gained possession and which they
hold, which we have lost for the said reason. Both these instances
are very certain, well-know