stated, on the model of the Council of Castile, and later (1600) the Cámara de Indias was organized with the Cámara of Castile as a pattern.[1] While the sala de gobierno of the Council of the Indies attended to administrative, military and financial matters, through its respective committees (of government, war and finance) the Cámara of the Indies heard all legal cases appealed from the colonial audiencias and made decisions largely in pursuance to the advice of the fiscal, whose office was patterned after that of the fiscal of Castile. Like the Cámara of Castile, that of the Indies exercised decisive authority in matters of appointment, and had cognizance, generally, over ecclesiastical affairs.
An important power which was exercised by the Council of Castile in the sixteenth century and assumed by the Council of the Indies immediately on its establishment (semi-legislative), was that of enacting autos acordados. These were enactments of a semi-administrative, semi-legislative character, similar in many regards to the décrets issued subsequently by French administrative councils and executives. It is notable, too, that this power of legislation was exercised by the colonial audiencias, but never by those of Spain, the jurisdiction of the latter tribunals being confined only to affairs of justice. Solórzano, in his Política Indiana, devotes a chapter to showing the differences between the powers of the audiencias of Spain and those of the colonies.[2] The latter had the fight of intervention in ecclesiastical and military affairs, finance, commercial and political administration, and even at times, they succeeded to the government on the death or absence of the governor or captain-general. A number of reasons existed for this disparity of power: from the very beginning, and certainly before the audiencias were established in Spain, the
- ↑ Solórzano, Política Indiana. II. 270-283.
- ↑ If is of course unnecessary to add that there were factors other than the commercial operative in the downfall of Spain's colonial empire. The fundamental defect was the projection of the narrow spirit of monopoly and unprogressivehess, which were the keynotes of her commercial system, into cultural, political and religious life.
It is nevertheless certain hat the first step toward the establishment of the Council of the Indies was taken in 1511 when a separate committee of the Council of Castile was designated to supervise the lminiStration of colonial affairs.
