this commerce; the license became current money which each person could utilize as he saw fit.9

When Philip II, in 1580, took in his hands the two scepters of the Peninsula, it seemed as if the difficulties of supplying manual labor could be easily solved. The Government of Madrid had as subjects precisely the same slave-traders who had victoriously competed with its own traders and it acquired the African agencies which it lacked before. There was even in a commercial alliance between those carrying on the trade of Lisbon and the colonists of America an excellent means of government, and the residents of the African settlements cordially welcomed their new sovereign.

But the hopes of collaboration were very soon destroyed. Nothing was farther from the intention of the Spanish Government than the fusion of the commerical interests of the two peoples. Quite the contrary. Under the pretext of respecting the autonomy of Portugal and of preserving her laws, Spain took care that the economic and commercial separation of the two monarchies should be maintained. Adopting the selfish views of the Consulat of Andalusia (board of trade), it persisted in excluding the Portuguese from the commerce of America, while, at the same time, by an inequality of which Lisbon did not cease to complain, the agencies of Africa were accessible to the merchants of Seville.

The Portuguese slave-trade was therefore far from attaining, during the Spanish rule, that is from 1580 to 1660, the extent which the reunion of the two crowns could have enabled it to acquire.

At the time when Philip II took possession of Portugal the commerce of the African agencies was generally farmed out to wholesale contractors, veritable Assientists, distributors of licenses to private traders, traders themselves, and watched over by the metropolitan administration. The heaviest branch of the traffic was that of slaves. It was sought to utilize these Assientists, and they were permitted, not without hesitation, to carry to the Castilian Indies

9 See the author's work, book 1st, and among the documents the publication of several of these licenses enabling one to reconstruct the principal types (Documents 1 to 22).

a third of the slaves for which they bartered in the agencies on their own account; but they could do this only by respecting the conditions imposed before on every holder of a license; registration had to be effected at Seville or in the Canaries, they must come back there to bring the returns, and bind themselves not to export gold and silver which must flow solely into Spain. It may be imagined that such unreasonable demands would create fraud and that these regulations were but little observed.

The African contractors proposed to give a new impetus to the slave-trade and to procure more ample resources for the treasury by the conclusion of more extended Assientos. The commerce of Seville, which feared, not without reason, to see its rivals profit by it to carry on the commerce of merchandise to the Indies, was able to inspire the government with the same suspicion. A scheme of Assiento was discussed and nearly concluded with the Consulado which was charged with the entire supply for the Spanish Indies; but the people of Seville would not farm out the slave-trade at a high enough price. In spite of the efforts of the African contractors, they decided to confide the Assiento to a Spaniard, Pedro Gomez Reynel, who made enticing promises (1595).

It was an equivocal solution. They had understood that the acquisition of the Portuguese agencies would permit them to do more and better than in the past; but, as they did not wish to trust the management of this commerce to the Portuguese agents, they chose a Castilian, whose administration would have its seat in Spain, who, doubtless, could get his supplies only in Africa, but over whom they would have surveillance to prevent smuggling. This system of half measures was doomed to a fatal check.

The role of the Assientist is above all to sell licenses to those willing to carry on the trade for a maximum price; he reserves for himself only a certain number of licenses and the exclusive right of supplying Buenos Aires. He binds himself to transport about thirty-eight thousand slaves to certain ports which shall be designated to him. The registration at Seville, the visit to the Indies are always obligatory. The Assientist establishes agents in Africa and in America; the majority of these purchasers of licenses are Portuguese, as are his contractors, and most of his agents.

It is proper to note here the origin of an institution which will be in force later on and will play an important part; it is that of the judicial commissioners, or the "conservator judges," appointed in the Indies and in Spain to settle difficulties arising from the Assiento between the Assientist and private individuals. They are chosen by the Assientists themselves or designated by the Counci1 of the Indies among the royal and commissioned officers; their duties shall never result from mere possession of office.

The Assiento of Reynel is the first Assiento that one can really choose as a model; being concluded by public competition and accompanied by high security (150,000 ducats) furnished by the Assientist, assuring to the latter the monopoly of the sale of licenses, guaranteeing the contractor against the fraud of those who would like to transport slaves to the Indies without license, by means of confiscation and fines, warning him against the case of suvis major (naval war or insurrection of slaves), and assuring to the Treasury an annual revenue of one hundred thousand ducats. Subsequent Assientos were made upon this model.

The Assiento of Reynel did not succeed; he encountered the ill will of the contractors in Africa and of the Portuguese traders. Both of them saw in him a successful rival and they came to an agreement to carry on contraband slave-trade. Reynel had to have recourse to settlement; in the impossibile situation in which he found himself when attempting to prosecute these many violations, he compromised with the smugglers. This was the origin of the impost to which all his successors had to have recourse.

The institution continued to perfect itself during the course of the seventeenth century. A special Junta was instituted in 1601 to discuss the new contract. This machinery of the Spanish administration, composed of councillors of the Council of the Indies. under the presidency of the governor of this council, of councillors: of finance, and of fiscals of the two councils, continued from that time although its composition had never been fixed and the king composed the Junta anew on the occasion of each Assiento. The successor of Reynel was the captain-general of Angola, farmer of

the duties of Africa, Juan Rodriguez Coutino. They went back inevitably to the most natural practice: confronted with the failure of the Spanish Assiento, they resigned themselves to an appeal to the Portuguese.

10

The Assientist bound himself to continue the payment of annuities, and the whole financial administration resulting from the slavetrade was thus in his hands. Difficulties were not long in arising however; Coutino entered into a law-suit with his predecessor, who claimed the right to utilize the unemployed licenses for which he had paid the duties. The confusion of administration, resulting from the continuance of the system of licenses, was always a source of complications and of difficulties between successive Assientists." The treasury was rather badly off from the preceding managers; the bidders were accustomed to promise heavy securities, but always furnished them tardily because they could only procure them by means of collections made upon the sales of slaves. From that time it became impossible for them to pay the duties, and the treasury, in seizing the securities, paid itself in reality out of its own money. It was thought they could remedy this by making all the profits of the Assiento flow into the coffers of Seville and by leaving to the Assientist only the disposal of the minimum strictly necessary to his administration. This was changing the contractor into a director, the contract into government control. The first trial was unfortunate: Assientist Vaz Coutino, brother of the preceding, exhausted, became bankrupt; the Assiento had to be placed under government control at the expense of the contractor who had failed (1609).

After him the Assiento was taken by one Coello, a simple substitute for a Portuguese trader imprisoned at Lisbon for bankruptcy. His Assiento, scarcely born, went under without its execution being even begun.

The mishaps of the first Assientists did not frighten the bidders; but, as the commerce of Seville complained of the competition of the

10 Coutino did not know how to get rid of smugglers and when he died his affairs were in a rather bad condition. Vaz Coutino, his brother, took upon himself the charge, in a transaction with the Spanish treasury, of finishing the exploitation and of straightening out the situation.

Portuguese, the Government of Madrid questioned whether it would not be better to go back to the ancient practice and to assimilate the slaves to the other merchandise by exacting that every slave should be sent from Seville. Confronted with the material impossibilities of such a measure they went back to the direct administration under the charge of the Contratacion. But this commerce was dead in Spain, the number of licenses delivered was insignificant, whilst during all this period of hesitation, from 1609 to 1614, the negroes were introduced into the Indies illicitly and the coffers of Hacienda (the treasury) defrauded of the total amount of the duty. They were forced to return to the Assiento. Delvas, a rich Portuguese merchant whose tenders had been already accepted in 1609 and afterwards arbitrarily rejected, re-entered into possession of his contract and obtained for himself and his purchasers of licenses the right to penetrate to the very interior of the lands, while before the Assientists had to be satisfied with selling off their cargoes in a few ports. This right, which they called "the internation," was later on to furnish to the Assientists a new facility of pushing their smuggling of goods to the most remote districts of the rule of the king of Spain, and to go as far as the most distant mines to gather precious metals which were afterwards scattered over Europe without passing through the channel of the Spanish mints. Delvas always had difficulties with the Contratacion. His successor Lamego, also Portuguese (1623), was the first Assientist who was able to carry on his exploitation well to the end. Angel and Sossa, who took the contract after him, saw detached from their contract a considerable portion of the licenses which were exploited for the profit of the Cardinal of Toledo, brother of the King (1631)." The history of this Assiento was exempt from sudden changes of fortune, and, like the preceding one, it placidly reached the end of its term. The greatest disappointments of the Assientists arose from the naval war which the rebellious Dutch carried on at that time against Spain. After the United Provinces, Portugal was also going to emancipate itself from the yoke of Philip and deprive the Spanish government again of the slave markets of the western coast of Africa.

11 This is the curious contract of Salvago and Atayde. See the author's work, book II, chap. IV.