FERNANDEZ NAVAERETTE, Pedro.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Conservacion de Monarquias y Discursos Politicos sobre la gran Consulta que el Consejo hizo al Señor Rey Don Filipe Tercero, al Presidente y Consejo Supremo de Castilla. First complete edition, following publication of some discourses in 1621. Pedro Fernandez Navarrette (1564-1632) was chaplain to the Spanish royal family, and an officer of the Inquisition. "The miserable state of Spain had led the supreme council of Castile to submit to King Philip III a Great Report (Gran Consulta) on the remedies to be applied; this report was delivered on February 1619, and gave rise to fifty Discursos or glosses from Navarrete, printed in 1626 at the royal press... Though a long-winded writer and rather too fond of learned quotations, Navarrete shows himself in many respects free from contemporary national and religious prejudice" (Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, vol. III, p. 7). The book is a significant study of the Spanish economic system, which throughout the 16th century had been flush with gold from the Americas, yet despite - or because of - this was on course for three centuries of economic stagnation. Navarette proposes numerous reforms, including regulating immigration, decreasing the number of courtiers, scaling back the extravagance of the royal house, improving the lot of the peasantry, and limiting the expansion of monasteries. Navarrette draws contrasts between Spain and countries like the Netherlands, which reap wealth from manufacturing despite not having access to an

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