The Consolidacion de Vales Reales in New Spain (from 1804)
A royal cedula of 26 December 1804 carried to the Americas an operation already running in Spain: the sale of the real estate of chantries and pious foundations and the calling in of the capital they had lent, to be paid into the royal treasury against the paper currency. In New Spain that capital was the mortgage credit of agriculture and mining. The petition against it counted 44.5 million pesos of pious capital against 59 million of working capital.
Why this wins its question: The Consolidacion de Vales Reales in the Americas is one of the best candidates in colonial economic history for a decisive event that almost no English-language source describes concretely: where it is mentioned it is a clause - "the crown seized church wealth, alienating creole elites" - with no numbers and no document. This object quotes the brief that fought it, from the 1813 Mexico printing read page by page: the exact heading of the cedula of 26 December 1804 and the two articles at issue; the signatories describing themselves as owners of estates charged with chantry capital, principals and guarantors of one another, who need that money "para dar giro y movimiento a la agricultura"; the distinction between three million pesos of church real estate and forty-four million of church lending; and the printed table setting 44,500,000 against 59,000,000 of working capital. It also does what the brief does not: marks that the 59 millions is inferred from the product rather than counted, prints the same page's praise of comercio libre for a generation of growth, and states plainly that the legislation at the centre of the object was read only through the words of its opponents - which is why the tier is secondary and not primary.
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 measure is identified in the petition against it by its heading: the "real cedula de 26 de diciembre de 804, sobre enagenacion de bienes raices y cobro de capitales de capellanias y obras pias para la consolidacion de vales", to be executed "en las Americas". The petitioners asked the suspension of two articles of the reglamento inserted in it, numbers 15 and 35, which governed "la exaccion y cobro de sus capitales, y para su traslacion a caxas reales por cuenta de la consolidacion de vales".
Who signed the objection describes the credit system better than any summary: "los infrascritos vecinos de la ciudad de Valladolid y su distrito, duenos de fincas rusticas y urbanas afectas a capitales de capellanias y obras pias, labradores, mineros, comerciantes y artesanos, que como principales y fiadores los unos de los otros los tenemos a nuestro cargo, y los necesitamos para dar giro y movimiento a la agricultura, a la industria y al comercio". The pious capital was not idle money held by the church; it was lent out on their estates and standing as their working capital, with the borrowers guaranteeing one another.
Their first argument is legal rather than economic, and narrow on purpose: article 15, they say, "no se comprehende material, formal ni virtualmente en el real decreto de 28 de noviembre, que es el que constituye la decision y sancion de la citada real cedula, y por consiguiente es ageno de la voluntad del Soberano, esta desnudo de autoridad, y no puede obligarnos de modo alguno". The brief argues that the crown's own decree does not authorise the article, and that the article is contrary to the beneficent intentions the cedula itself declares - a reform petition framed as obedience to the king against his officials.
A second writing in the same collection, addressed to Manuel Sixto Espinosa of the council of state and sole director for the prince of the peace in matters of the royal treasury, concedes the smaller half of the measure and resists the larger. There is no objection, it says, to selling the real estate belonging to chantries and pious works under the cedula of 26 December 1804; the grave objections are to the capitals held at interest by the king's vassals being passed into the consolidation fund by the forced and voluntary oblations of articles 15 and 35, "y por otra parte se puede consultar a las urgencias de la corona por medios menos nocivos y mucho mas eficaces". The urgency of the crown is not denied; the instrument is.
The two magnitudes that make the case are set side by side. The real estate of these pious destinations, the writing says, "se puede estimar prudencialmente en dos y medio o tres millones de pesos"; but the capitals belonging to the same destinations which the king's vassals have at their charge "pueden ascender a quarenta y quatro millones de pesos". Selling the houses and haciendas the foundations owned was a transaction of about three million; calling in what they had lent was a transaction of about forty-four.
The comparison is then printed as a table, and it is the sharpest thing in the brief: "Capitales piadosos que se exigen para la consolidacion de vales ... 44.500.000. Capital productivo o de habilitacion ... 59.000.000. Diferencia ... 14.500.000." On the petitioners' own reckoning the crown was calling in a sum equal to three quarters of all the working capital of the kingdom.
The figure for productive capital is derived, not observed, and the derivation is worth stating because it is where the argument is weakest. The general product of the kingdom is put at fifty-nine millions; it is reasoned that in the preceding twenty years there had been an annual surplus which progressively raised the productive capital, but that the product had remained above it until 1805 - "y asi tenemos ya terminos bastante fixos para comparar la suma de los capitales piadosos con el capital productivo o de habilitacion". The working capital is inferred from the product; the two numbers in the table are not measured on the same footing.
The same page contains the collection's clearest statement in favour of a royal policy, and it is about trade rather than credit. In the last period of twenty years, it says, the population of New Spain grew by more than a fifth, the general product by a third, and the revenues of the sovereign by a half - "efectos todos del comercio libre", which by breaking the monopoly in which twelve or fourteen houses had held it (houses that alone loaded at the Xalapa fair with the whole value of each fleet, sold at their pleasure and accumulated the money to hand over with the next fleet) multiplied the agents of agriculture, industry and commerce, and so the means of subsistence and the population. The brief that resists one Bourbon measure credits another with a generation of growth.
The counterpoint the documents do not supply has to be named. Everything above is the case for the debtors, drafted by their advocate and printed by him eight years later in a book defending his own loyalty. The crown's side - a treasury at war with Britain, a paper currency losing value at home, and the argument that the pious capital would be repaid with interest by the consolidation fund rather than confiscated - appears in these pages only as the position being answered. Nothing read here establishes what the operation actually collected in the Americas, who was ruined by it, when it was suspended, or whether the petitioners' forty-four millions was near the truth.
The tier of this object is deliberately one step below its source. The collection of 1813 is a primary printing of the petitions; but the royal cedula of 26 December 1804, its reglamento, and articles 15 and 35 are known here only through the wording of the men objecting to them, and the two royal instruments themselves were not reachable. An object whose subject is a piece of legislation, and which has not read the legislation, is secondary evidence about it however primary the paper it rests on.