Nuevo sistema de gobierno económico para la América (written 1743, printed Madrid 1789)
A book printed under royal licence in Madrid in 1789 tells the crown that the conquest's rigour was carried on "hasta aniquilar á los infelices Indios", that the Recopilación's protections are dead letters because "la práctica es contra la ley", that denying the Indians reason is ignorance or malice, and that the land should be given to them in ownership. Its argument for that is utility, and it says so on the same page.
Why this wins its question: The Nuevo sistema is normally met in English as a footnote in a survey of the Bourbon reforms — "Campillo proposed free trade and better treatment of the Indians" — with no quotation, no page, and no mention that the printed book disputes its own authorship in its second leaf. The text is in full view and it is far stranger and far more useful than the footnote. This entry prints it: the sentence that says the rigour was carried on "hasta aniquilar á los infelices Indios"; the present-tense charge that they are oppressed "como se ha hecho y hace hoy"; the question "Pero de que sirve esto si la práctica es contra la ley?", which is a crown official conceding in Madrid that the Recopilación's protections were dead letters; the objection about men "como brutos" set down in the words its holders used; the reply that denying them reason is "ignorancia ó malicia", grounded on the cities, buildings and empires they built before Europeans arrived; and then, in the same chapter, the passage that says limited faculties would be "la circunstancia mas feliz" for government, and the line that justice needs no proof "porque la política pide que se utilicen". It also prints the comparison the book makes with English colonial policy and the reason it gives — Spain has Indian vassals and England has none — which is a Spanish minister's own contribution to a question this corpus treats elsewhere. The result is not a reformer's portrait and not a prosecution: it is the document, with the humanity and the instrumentality on the same page, where the author put them.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The book announces its subject and its interest on its title page, and the two are inseparable: "NUEVO SISTEMA DE GOBIERNO ECONÓMICO PARA LA AMÉRICA: Con los males y daños que le causa el que hoy tiene, de los que participa copiosamente España; y remedios universales para que la primera tenga considerables ventajas, y la segunda mayores intereses: POR EL SEÑOR DON JOSEPH DEL CAMPILLO Y COSIO", printed "CON LICENCIA EN MADRID: EN LA IMPRENTA DE BENITO CANO. MDCCLXXXIX." The promise is advantage for America and greater revenue for Spain, in that order and in the same sentence. Everything the book says about the Indians is said inside that promise, and reading it otherwise misreads it.
The printed book raises a doubt about its own authorship before it begins. The editor's prologue opens: "Podria tal vez dudar alguno si el nuevo Sistema de Gobierno Económico para la América es obra del Señor Don Joseph Campillo; pues consta por ella que se empezó á escribir en 8 de Febrero de 1743; que el primer tomo se acabó en 14 de Julio siguiente; y que el segundo es posterior á este tiempo, cuyas fechas no son compatibles con la de su muerte, ocurrida repentinamente en el Juéves Santo del mismo año de 1743." The editor's own answer is that either the manuscript dates he worked from are wrong, or the alternative that runs onto the next page. The composition dates and the death date are the book's; the reconciliation is not, and this entry does not supply one. The work is cited here by its title and its 1789 imprint rather than by its attributed author, and no claim below depends on who held the pen.
The diagnosis is stated in a sentence that a defensive book could not contain. After describing the early rigour of the war as intended to overawe, paragraph 29 goes on: "Pero despues no se guardó en esto el prudente medio que correspondia, y se llevó adelante el rigor, hasta aniquilar á los infelices Indios, sin considerar que reducidos ya al estado de no poder dar recelo al Gobierno ... entónces debia seguir máximas totalmente distintas". The maxims it names are commercial and civil: "por medio de un buen Gobierno Económico, reducir á los Indios á vida civil, tratarlos con benignidad y con dulzura; animarlos á la industria, y por este camino hacer de ellos vasallos útiles y Españoles, y no mirar con desprecio la calidad de Indios, ni oprimirlos, como se ha hecho y hace hoy." The last five words are in the present tense, in a book printed under royal licence in the capital.
The central proposal is property. The chapter argues from a comparison between a country whose cultivators hold nothing — where "los infelices naturales trabajan como esclavos ... y estos como no tienen propiedad en nada, ni esperanza de mudar de Estado, tampoco les asiste aquella heroyca ambicion de adelantar para sí y sus sucesores" — and one where the vassal is free and works for himself. The conclusion is paragraph 8: it is "suficiente probanza, para que real y verdaderamente se conozca quanto importa el que las tierras se den en propiedad á nuestros Indios, y que por consiguiente se les dexe la plena y pacífica posesion de todo el fruto de su trabajo; esto es únicamente lo que anima para que no se sienta la continua fatiga."
The book then says why the existing law is not enough, and the admission is the most valuable thing in it. Paragraph 9: "Me hago cargo de que por la ley tienen nuestros Indios uno y otro. Esto es, en propiedad algunas tierras, y en pacífica posesion los frutos de su trabajo. Que son libres y que nadie puede privarlos de sus haciendas ni de su libertad. Pero de que sirve esto si la práctica es contra la ley?" And the answer on the following page: "el hecho es que comunmente aunque tengan propiedad, no tienen seguridad de nada para sí ni para sus descendientes, ni fomento para cosa alguna; y hemos de considerar que una posesion precaria no es posesion que alienta al hombre á trabajar como la que es segura." The corpus's objects on the Recopilación and on Indian land record what the law provided. This is a Spanish text, printed in Madrid with a licence, recording that the provision did not hold.
The objection is printed in its own words rather than softened. Under the heading "Reparos que se pondrán á las razones que se acaban de explicar, y concluyente satisfaccion á todo", the author states what he expects to hear from "sugetos habilísimos, y en la realidad bien torpes": first that the country is depopulated and there are no Indians to give land to, and second, "que de qué puede servir el dárselas á unos hombres que son como brutos, sin discurso, sin ambicion insensibles é incapaces para todo?" That this was a live opinion among capable men in the eighteenth century, two centuries after Valladolid, is part of the record and belongs next to the answer rather than behind it.
The answer is unambiguous and it argues from American history. To deny them "hasta la calidad de racionales", the book replies, "es ageno de la verdad, y propio ó de la misma ignorancia ó de la malicia". Then the evidence: "Si miramos como debemos lo que eran los Indios ántes de conocer á los Europeos, es preciso confesar tenian notorias luces de talento y discurso. Manifiesta esto claramente las grandes poblaciones y ciudades que formáron, los prodigiosos y excelentes edificios que construyéron, los Imperios tan poderosos que fundáron, su modo arreglado de vivir baxo de ciertas leyes civiles y militares, teniendo su género de culto de divinidad; y aun ahora vemos, que todas las artes y oficios los exercitan á imitacion de los mas hábiles Europeos, con gran destreza hasta la pintura, música, &c." The pre-conquest civilisations are brought as proof of capacity, in a Madrid imprint, as an argument for giving their descendants land.
A few pages later the same book turns the same question the other way, and this is the counterpoint that has to be printed beside the achievement. Paragraph 19: "en el supuesto de que los Indios tengan las potencias tan limitadas como se dice, ó aun mucho mas, me parece que ésta es la circunstancia mas feliz que puede haber para los fines políticos del gobierno; pues de este modo se podrá con toda facilidad hacer de ellos aquello que se quiera, habiendo hombres que sepan y alcanzen oportunamente valerse de esta ventaja para dirigirlos al bien suyo y del Estado, que es únicamente lo que proponemos, promovemos y tratamos." And paragraph 20 states the ground of the whole proposal without embarrassment: "Es, pues, de justicia y muy conforme á una buena política dar las tierras á los Indios en propiedad. Que sea de justicia no necesita de prueba, porque la política pide que se utilicen." Justice needs no proof because policy requires that they be made useful. The defence of Indian rationality in c7 and this sentence are in the same chapter of the same book, and an account that quotes one without the other is not quoting the book.
The book also makes an explicit comparison of colonial models, and reaches an unexpected conclusion from it. The section headed "PUNTO UNICO" undertakes to prove "que de justicia deben permitirse ciertas Fábricas en América, y distinto gobierno de los extrangeros en sus Colonias, que el nuestro en aquella". The reason is demographic: "Estas Naciones tienen pocos Indios por vasallos. Los Ingleses ninguno, y tienen muchas Fábricas en sus paises, y nosotros tenemos pocas, y muchos Indios. A ellos les es indispensable no permitir ninguna Fábrica en sus Colonias, porque como pueden surtirlas de todo con sus Fábricas, esto les produce la mas copiosa utilidad." Because Spain has Indian vassals and England has none, the mercantilist prohibition on colonial manufactures is said to be unjust in the Spanish case; and the expected growth in "el consumo de nuestros Indios" is so large "que no será posible pueda surtir España en muchos años la mitad de su abasto". The Indians appear here as a market, which is both why the argument was made and why it should not be mistaken for a rights argument.
The book was printed in 1789 into a live argument, not into a vacuum. The Real Sociedad Bascongada's Extractos for 1779 carry a memoir pressing the same case from the other end of the monarchy: that "No son estas las únicas utilidades, que pueden esperar de la providencia del comercio libre de América las provincias esentas. Un comercio inmenso con las colonias, y con el estrangero debe enriquecerlas y poblarlas no menos que lo está hoy la Holanda", and predicting that within twenty-five years such a trade would be "una de las columnas principales de la monarquía". That is a year after the 1778 Reglamento de Comercio Libre and ten years before this imprint. Reading the two together places the Nuevo sistema in a current rather than making it the source of one: neither text cites the other, and the inference is this entry's, which is why the confidence is lower than for anything quoted above.
The limits of this entry should be as clear as its quotations. Only the 1789 imprint was read, and only the chapters named: the title page and editor's prologue, the diagnosis at printed page 15, the land chapter at printed pages 84 to 92, and the manufactures section at printed page 114. No manuscript was seen and the authorship question the book itself raises is left open. Above all, nothing read here shows that a single acre was distributed to a single community as a result: this is a proposal, and what the crown actually enacted in the same decades — the intendancies, the free-trade reglamento, the land instruction of 1754 — is recorded elsewhere in this corpus and should be read against it rather than through it. The book's own title says the second beneficiary is Spain's revenue; whatever it proposes for the Indians it proposes as the means.