ABSTRACT
Summary of political development—Short period of prosperity; causes of decline—Royal fiscal system counteracts advantages offered to national trade by new facilities—Short-lived boom in industry; lack of economic sense; introduction of foreign manufactures and workers—Agricultural prosperity ruined by the expulsion of the Moors, by the growth of great estates, by the encouragement of sheep-farming, and by the fiscal and commercial policy of the Government—Depopulation; widespread poverty; wretched condition of the working classes—Slight increase in national prosperity in the eighteenth century.
