The Politics of Giving in the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata: Donors, Lenders, Subjects, and Citizens

2: Defining Spanish Loans and Donativos

32 chapter 2 defining spanish loans and donativos In the previous chapter, I stated that loans and donativos functioned as bargaining channels through which donors and lenders legitimately accessed the Spanish distribution of income and power in the eighteenth century. In this chapter, I will sustain my claim by reviewing the works published by early modern Spanish intellectuals. In the eighteenth century, civil legislation, canonical debates over usury, and customary gift practices impacted Spanish lending and giving. Thus, my overview considers not only the point of view of political economists interested in discussing royal revenue but also the legal framework that regulated giving and lending. In the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, donativos and loans became reasonable fiscal tools in the 1790s, and so this chapter also offers a discussion of that historical conjuncture . References to historical and anthropological interpretations of the meanings of gifts also enrich this review. Finally, in the last section of this chapter I review the Spanish constitutional principles that legitimized requests for rewards in exchange for providing financial assistance to the monarch. early modern viewpoints: law and custom, political economists, and canonists I will start my discussion of the then-contemporary meanings of loans and donativos with José Canga Argüelles’s Diccionario de hacienda, published in the early 1800s while he served as minister of royal finance (secretario de hacienda). The Diccionario defines donativos as “the subject’s free and voluntary cession of income [haberes] for relieving [socorro] the treasury, he being the only assessor of the amount.” While, in principle, donativos could only be free and voluntary, Canga Argüelles admits that “the magnitude of public crises [emergencias públicas], the lack of good judgment defining spanish loans and donativos 33 [filosofía] but above all the perception of an excessively exalted sovereign power, have occasionally converted them into violent acts, although by their nature they can only stem from freedom, thereby introducing within the exchequer’s chaos [combinaciones fatales] the distinction between free and forced donativos” (italics in the original).1 At critical times, neither “free” nor “forced” donativos were capable of balancing the royal accounts as, according to Canga Argüelles, warfare “devoured in one day the wealth produced in one year.” However, he acknowledges that “free and spontaneous” donativos yielded significant funds, while forced ones were in comparison “barren” (estériles) as they “combine[d] the contradictory attributes of compulsion and freedom.” Canga Argüelles additionally lists several examples of voluntary and therefore financially profitable donativos that had been advanced to the crown since the mid-seventeenth century. The minister includes on his list the one provided by the Cortes in 1653, the 1684 contribution from the merchants of Andalusia, the donativo offered by the archbishops and bishops of Spain in 1784, and the one supplied by “all the classes of the nation” for fighting the War against the French Convention (1794). Additionally, for 195 years (1556–1750) the merchants of Cadiz annually had provided the Spanish Crown with hefty donativos. Canga Argüelles notes that the monarchs regarded the merchants’ contributions as “heroic efforts [on the part of subjects] to express their loyalty.”2 In contrast, the author of the Diccionario argues that the “forced” donativos established in 1629, 1632, 1635, and 1690 were either low yielding or “fruitless” and, in most cases, resisted. Canga Argüelles even cites Minister Pedro de Campomanes, who, when asked to assess the possibility of the implementation of forced donativos in Spain, declared them “inconsistent, detrimental to the subjects’ status, and capable of arising problems and hatred as patently demonstrated by previous attempts.” Forced donativos collected from the royal officers’ salaries were the only exception to the rule of failure, as these donativos could potentially become a reliable source of income. Nevertheless, Canga Argüelles argues that officers regarded them as an “abuse of power” and a “violation of the principles sustaining the right to receive a salary,” for the officers’ earnings paid them “for their services and [were assessed] proportionally to the capital they invested to make them capable of serving the patria.” The author even calls the 1689 forced donativo on salaries “a tribute under the deceitful title of donativo.”3 It is noteworthy that Canga Argüelles regarded the officeholders’ salaries as a payment for their investments, chapter 2 34 indicating that in spite of their professional competence, many bureaucrats still accessed their offices through purchase in...