To extend the domains of the monarch, to "cause the Indians to live in the knowledge of our Catholic {51} faith," they conquered America, and they brought to the New World a religion, a political _régime_, universities, an economic system--all the elements, in short, of a traditional civilisation. Absolutism in government, monopoly in matters of commerce and finance, intolerance in questions of dogma and morality, tutelage and rigorous isolation; these were the foundations of Spanish colonisation. The methods practised by the Dutch and the English in their colonies were not essentially different. Toqueville and Boutmy have studied the effects, in the United States, of Calvinistic intolerance and commercial monopoly. They have remarked upon the slavery of negroes in the agricultural districts of Virginia, and the cupidity of the emigrants who pursued the Indians with a truly Puritan ardour. The viceroy, the representative of the monarch, exercised full powers of government in the colonies. He presided over the _Real Audiencia_, the king's tribunal, was superintendent of finances, protector of the Church, and chief of the army. To him all power was subordinate, whether ecclesiastical, military, or civil. A luxurious court surrounded him, the flattery of courtiers intoxicated him, and subornation had its way with him. Sometimes the viceroys represented the real aspirations of the colonists, and were serious legislators, such as Francisco de Toledo, in Peru; or they defended the colonists from the expeditions of filibusters with such energy that their fiercely contested battles evoked the sentiment of nationality. At other times they enriched themselves by the sale of posts, and drained the treasury, or passed in progress through the cities of their state, haughty overlords surrounded with luxury and gold. To her political despotism corresponds the commercial monopoly which Spain established in her dominions. Humboldt defined the ancient ideal of {52} the colonising races in his "Essay on the Government of New Spain": "For centuries a colony was regarded as useful to the metropolis only inasmuch as it furnished a great number of raw materials and consumed plenty of goods and merchandise, which were borne by the vessels of the mother-country."[1] England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal acted upon the same exclusivist principles; the ordinances of Cromwell were as inflexible on this point as the schedules of Philip II. Commercial liberty and industrial competition were condemned on the same grounds as rebellion and heresy.