_Don_ Francisco de Toledo came out to _Peru_ as Viceroy in the year 1568. He was a man well advanced in life and of much experience, but of a political morality which is not to be defended according to our ethics; although it might claim numerous precedents in Roman history. With the sole object of increasing public security, and without the least pretence of any crime on the part of the illustrious victim save that of being a living political danger, he put to death the last of the _Incas_, the young Tupac Amaru. This Viceroy, however, was most conscientious in his desire for the well-being of the people committed to his charge. He was indefatigable as well as prudent in legislating; and he devoted five years to making a journey throughout every district of his Viceroyalty, with such success that the Peruvians admitted that their country had not been so well administered since the time of the good Tupac Yupanqui. It is to this governor that the University of St. Mark at _Lima_ mainly owes its existence; and he had the advanced judgment to perceive that the two main sources of Peruvian wealth were corn and wool, rather than silver and gold. It was to the fact that _Don_ Francisco de Toledo, who remained in _Peru_ till 1579, was accompanied in his journeys by the Jesuit D’Acosta that we owe the valuable natural history of _Peru_, composed by that writer, the results of fifteen years of literary labour. [Sidenote: 1611.] The commercial policy of Spain in forbidding all trade between her colonies and other nations had, in the course of time, a singularly retributive effect upon herself. Owing to various causes, amongst which was the expulsion by Philip III. of the Moors, her industrial population became so reduced that that country was at once obliged to contract her operations of war and of peace. From want of men her fleets were ruined, and from the same cause her manufactures had sunk into decay; even her agriculture was insufficient for the national consumption. The law respecting colonial trade was still enforced, and the mineral wealth of the _Andes_ still flowed into Spain; but the necessities of demand and supply were above law, and her merchants had to look to other countries for the supplies which were to be sent to America in return, and thus the gold and silver merely passed through Spain on its way to England or to Holland, to France and Italy. In the name of Spanish firms those of the above nations sent their goods to America, and at length it was computed that, of the European goods supplied to the Spanish American provinces, not more than a twentieth part were of Spanish growth or fabric. The climax of this state of things was arrived at when the lord of the mines of _Potosí_ was constrained to issue an edict raising copper money to a value in currency nearly equal to that of silver.