The penury of the country, indeed, was greater than ever. The American trade, a close monopoly nominally, had previously been the ultimate resource of Spanish kings in need; but that was failing now. In June 1632 the silver fleet came into Seville, and instead of the treasure being delivered to its legitimate owners, most of it was seized by the Government. The merchants utterly lost heart, and when the time came for the return fleet to leave Seville in the autumn, Hopton wrote: "The Indian fleet is ready to sail, but there is no merchandise nor merchant ships, and it will cost the King more than it will bring. The reason for this is that for many years past the trade of the Indies has decayed, being wholly given up by Spaniards, and kept alive by strangers. The Spanish merchants think it not worth while to continue a fleet, as the King keeps in the _Contratacion_ (India House) all the silver and gold, and hath assumed to himself first the customs, then the 47 per cent. average, and will not declare his purpose as to the rest. This has caused such disability and unwillingness to send goods, and hath brought trade so low, that whereas licences for strangers to trade there were hardly gotten for 4000 ducats, they are now offering them for 4000 reales; and I thinke they will shortly be forced to _hyre_ adventurers. As for the trade in Portugal, that country cannot do a sixth part of it, and so they are obliged to grant licences {264} to contract with strangers to trade in Brazil, offering such conditions as they may trade safely." I have transcribed these lines at length, because they show in vivid terms how the suicidal system of finance was ruining every class of the community. The workers, agricultural and urban, especially the former, had been the first to go under, then the smaller tradesmen, crushed by the alcabala tax on all sales, and the tampering with the currency; and the turn now had come of the great merchants and bankers; whilst even the nobles and churchmen had been bled freely by the last "voluntary donation."[1] In these circumstances it is not surprising that the dissatisfaction became almost clamorous in its intensity. Such pasquins passed from hand to hand on Liars' Walk that people said that the ghost of Villa Mediana must surely be walking his old haunts again, so bitter were they. Olivares, it was whispered, had poisoned the Infante Carlos, and had tried to send Fernando by the same road. The French were ready with great armies to devastate Spain, only because Olivares was coquetting with the rebel Orleans. Even the Pope, said the gossips, was being insulted and flouted by this minister, who was but an ill-born Jew in disguise.[2] "If you heard," wrote Hopton to Cottington, in August 1632, "the {265} libels and foolish inventions of the people against the Conde, you would never desire to be a favourite."[3] [Sidenote: Olivares' difficulties]