ATTEMPTS TO CHECK ABUSES 161 had in trading." " Let your Highness order your ships to be laden and command the ports to be opened " to native vessels. " There are none now, because your Highness wills to close the ports "except to your own trade. An attempt to remedy this state of things by grant- ing passes to native ships, and by forbidding trade to officials, proved unavailing. The pass-system opened up a wider scope for private trading, by allowing the Portuguese servants of the crown to employ native craft to carry their own ventures. By a proclamation of 1524, the penalty to a native captain found in Indian waters without a Portuguese license was death and seizure of his ship and property. The officials took care, before granting the permit, to secure a lion's share in the profits of the voyage. Every one, sometimes the governor himself, was in the conspiracy, and prosecu- tions merely strengthened it by the judicial sanction of acquittals. " Which thing did not astonish me," wrote a candid observer, Limao Botelho, in 1548, " be- cause the procurator of your Highness is one to get his salary." The Portuguese sovereigns were, in fact, unable to check the corruption even of the Indian Department at Lisbon, and proved powerless to control their dis- tant servants in the East. After the union of Portugal with the Spanish crown in 1580, the drain of the Nether- lands war crippled the public funds required for the Indian commerce, and in 1587 the royal monopoly of the spice trade was sold to a body of capitalists under
