Deeper-lying causes were at work, however. The damage from any single event could have been repaired if there had been wholesome vigor in the Spanish political organization, as there was and as there is still among the Spaniards as a people. It was the fortune of Spain, at this critical period of her history, to have the control of affairs vested in the hands of rulers who were negligent of her condition, by the distraction of their interests or by natural incompetence, and who wasted her resources. The framework of government offered no chance for good councils to reach the monarch’s ears. Men of business sense were excluded from office even in the towns, so far as possible, and were a rarity in the national parliament; power lay in the hands of lay and ecclesiastical lords who had inherited feudal ideas, the reverse of business-like, from the earlier period of the crusade against the Moors, and who had no understanding of the measures needed for industrial development. There can be little doubt that the prime evil from which Spain suffered was (as it still is) bad government. =201. The burden of taxes.=—The chief political abuse appeared in the form of taxes so burdensome in their amount and in the method of collection that industry was stifled. Taxes increased so rapidly in the sixteenth century that in 1594 it was asserted that they amounted to 30 per cent on a man’s property, and that farmers could not exist no matter how small a rent they paid; they left Spain or went to prison. The “alcabala,” a tax supposed to be 10 per cent on a ware every time it was bought and sold, was raised until it absorbed most of the profits of trade and was a leading factor in the decline of industry. A Spanish author of the eighteenth century (Ulloa) shows that a man engaged in the manufacture of a certain stuff would have had to pay in taxes actually more than he earned; “hence it follows that he would have gained more by making nothing, and in Spain it is profitable not to work.” Some industries, more fortunate, paid 60 per cent or 40 per cent of the value of the goods as a tax to the government.