Thus on December 15, 1558, King Philip II. decreed that any foreign
person who should traffic with Spanish America should be punished by
death and confiscation of property. The edict was emphatic and stern,
and contained a clause which deprived the Royal Audiences in Spanish
America of any powers of dispensation in the execution of these
penalties:
"If anyone shall disobey this law, whatever his state or condition,
his life is forfeit, and his goods shall be divided in three parts,
of which one shall go to our Royal Treasure, one to the judge, and
one to the informer."
It is, of course, notorious that the distance which separated the
colonies from the motherland prevented the enforcing of many laws,
whether good or bad, and that the Spanish-American local
expression--"The law is obeyed but not carried out"--was common to
nearly every district. At the same time, the mischief caused by decrees
such as these may readily be imagined. A rich bribe to an informer was
in itself an incentive to the stirring up of mischief where frequently
none was intended. Such official bribes as these, however, were wont to
be more than counteracted by the private inducements held out by many of
the foreign adventurers and traders themselves, and after a while a
great number of the officials found it very much to their profit not
only to wink at the wholesale commerce and smuggling that was being
carried on, but even actively to promote it and to participate in its
benefits.
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