The Casa de Contratacion, although in many respects a purely mercantile body, was endowed with special powers. So wide was its authority that to be associated with this body was wont to prove of enormous financial benefit. Thus, it was entitled to make its own laws, and it was specially enacted by Royal Decree that these were to be obeyed by all Spanish subjects as implicitly as any others of the nation. So far as the commercial world was concerned, the powers of the Casa de Contratacion were sheerly autocratic. The institution, in fact, held the fortunes of all the colonials in its hand. It possessed, in the first place, the privilege of naming the price which the inhabitants of the New World should pay for the manufactured goods of the Old. In addition to this, it lay within its domain to arrange the rates at which the produce sent from the colonies was to be sold in the Spanish markets. From this it will be evident that, commercially speaking, its powers were feudal. It was inevitable that frequent evils should have sprung from the inauguration of a system such as this. It became almost a religion to every Spanish official and trader to batten upon the unfortunate colonial, quite regardless of the fact that the pioneer settler was being strangled during the process. Since the hapless dweller in South America was not allowed to bargain or haggle, and was forced to take whatever was graciously sent out to him at a rate condescendingly fixed, it frequently happened that this latter was five or ten times the legitimate price. The disadvantages endured by the humble oversea strugglers, however, did not end here, for their own produce received the coldest of financial greetings in Europe, and the prices realized from these frequently left the agriculturalists in despairing wonder as to whether it was worth while to continue with their various industries. Added to all these were further regulations which proved both irksome and costly to the men of the south. Twice a year the Casa de Contratacion sent out a formidable fleet from Cadiz, escorted by men-of-war. It was this fleet which carried the articles of which the colonials were in urgent need. Now, the main settlements of the Spanish merchants and officials, as distinguished from the colonial, were in Panama and the north, and it was largely in order to benefit these privileged beings that the ridiculous regulations were brought into force which made the fleet of galleons touch at the Isthmus of Panama alone. By this means it was insured that these goods should pass through the commercial head-quarters, and leave a purely artificial profit to the Spaniards concerned, instead of being sent direct to the various ports with which the coasts of the Continent were now provided. [Illustration: BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS. "The Apostle of the Indies," who took up the cause of the much afflicted natives of South America. _From the portrait in the Bibliotheque Nationale._ _A. Rischgitz._]