The appeal sounds genuine, and no doubt to some extent it was so, for it did not suit Olivares to be the person to be held solely responsible for the grave state of things that was already arousing even long-suffering Castile to passionate protest; and the privation and misery of the greater part of the population were, it must have been evident to the Count-Duke, powerful instruments against him in the hands of his enemies, now growing daily bolder. Philip always wanted to do well, that was the tragedy of his life, and if good resolutions had sufficed, no better ruler could have been desired. Any appeal, moreover, to his conscience always found an immediate echo, though a fleeting one; and in his reply to the minister the weakness as well as the rectitude of his character are touchingly displayed. In his own great sprawling hand Philip wrote on Olivares' letter--
"COUNT,--I have resolved to do as you ask me, for the sake of God, of myself, and of you. Nothing is boldness from you to me, knowing, as I do, your zeal and love. I will do it, Count, and I return you this paper with this reply, so that { 182} you may make it an heirloom of your house, that your descendants may learn how to speak to kings in matters that touch their fame, and that they may know what an ancestor they had. I should like to leave it in my archives to teach my children, if God grant me any, and other kings, how they should submit to what is just and expedient.--I, THE KING."
Whatever may have been Philip's intention, and it is impossible to doubt his sincerity, his good resolutions, as Olivares probably foresaw, did not last long; but the cavillers for a time were silenced, and Olivares at any future crisis could and did always point to his letter, and shift a full share of his responsibility upon the King. The responsibility, in good truth, was a heavy one. The constant drain of men and money to Germany, Italy, and Flanders fell mainly upon the realms of Castile, where the poverty was greatest. The expulsion of the Moriscos (1610), the most ingenious and industrious craftsmen in the land, had already produced its dire effects, and skilled industry, which formerly paid most of the taxes, had well-nigh disappeared. Without doing anything to revive manufactures in Spain itself, the Government of Olivares now began the fatal policy of prohibiting commerce of all sorts with the countries at war with Spain, which soon meant all maritime Europe; and the consequence was a complete dearth of commercial movements, a terrible rise in prices, universal contraband and untold suffering, which the purblind minister sought to remedy by the puerile device of suddenly reducing by one half the value of copper money (May 1627), and { 183} fixing a maximum price at which farmers might sell food stuffs!