The magnitude of the evil was such as to claim the earliest attention of the cortes under the new monarchs. Acts were passed, fixing the standard and legal value of the different denominations of coin. A new coinage was subsequently made. Five royal mints were alone authorised, afterwards augmented to seven, and severe penalties denounced against the fabrication of money elsewhere. The reform of the currency gradually infused new life into commerce, as the return of the circulations, which have been interrupted for a while, quickens the animal body. This was furthered by salutary laws for the encouragement of domestic industry. Internal communication was facilitated by the construction of roads and bridges. Absurd restrictions on change of residence, as well as the onerous duties which had been imposed on commercial intercourse between Castile and Aragon, were repealed. Public credit was re-established by the punctuality with which the government redeemed the debt contracted during the Portuguese war; and notwithstanding the repeal of various arbitrary imposts which enriched the exchequer under Henry IV, such was the advance of the country, under the wise economy of the present reign, that the revenue was augmented nearly sixfold between the years 1477 and 1482. Thus released from the heavy burdens imposed on it, the spring of enterprise recovered its former elasticity. The productive capital of the country was made to flow through the various channels of domestic industry. The hills and the valleys again rejoiced in the labour of the husbandman; and the cities were embellished with stately edifices, both public and private, which attracted the gaze and commendation of foreigners. The writers of that day are unbounded in their plaudits of Isabella, to whom they principally ascribe this auspicious revolution in the condition of the country and its inhabitants, which seems almost as magical as one of those transformations in romance wrought by the hands of some benevolent fairy. _The Pre-eminence of the Royal Authority_ This, which, we have seen, appears to have been the natural result of the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, was derived quite as much from the influence of their private characters as from their public measures. Under such a sovereign, the court, which had been little better than a brothel under the preceding reign, became the nursery of virtue and generous ambition.