So he built ships of war, and made harbors for them, gave charters to East and West India Companies, planted colonies in India and America, decreed tariffs to protect infant manufactures, gave bounties to all kinds of artisans, encouraged manufacturing industry, and declared war on the whole brood of aristocratic peculators that absorbed the revenues of the kingdom.

There also was that terror of colonial peculators, the old ex-Intendant Morales, who, having quarrelled with every governor of Louisiana he ever saw, was now snarling at Casa Calvo from force of habit.

The sufferers murmur, and complain; but the government appears to wink at the oppression for a time, and reserves its dreadful vengeance till the annual review, on the plains of Fez, where the collected spoils of the cruel peculator are seized, and himself deposed, imprisoned, and the whole fruit of his rapine transferred to the royal treasury.