The main difference and the main characteristic of the Spanish colonial system was this--the colonies were the private property of the King of Spain. This, then, is the keystone of the edifice--that the dominions were vested in the Crown, not in the nation. The derivation of this theory is doubtless from the fact that in the early exploring days the Spanish and Portuguese kings were, really or apparently, private adventurers, and, in fact, the adventurers always assumed that they were stewards of royal estates rather than officers of a kingdom. Thus the colonies were the property of the King of Spain for the time being. Ferdinand had, in 1511, established a tribunal to manage his new property. This was the Council of the Indies, which made laws for the colonies and distributed all the appointments and acted as a Court of Appeal from the Audiencia in America. The King made all grants of land, and allowed the colonists only local liberties; the Spanish nation had no concern whatever in the matter. A modern parallel is the Congo Free State as it was a year or two ago. It is probable that the New World had little to complain of except in the matter of trade and commerce, but here the system was illiberal and short-sighted. The fifth share of the King in the produce of all the gold and silver mines was a small matter in comparison with the multitude of harassing restrictions,[38] which Spain never had the wisdom to cancel till it was too late. No colony was allowed to trade with any country except Spain; all the exports, whatever their destination, had first to go to the mother country, and the navigation laws were conceived in a similar spirit. The most glaring instance of stupidity was the prohibition of import trade laid upon Buenos Aires. No Atlantic colonial port might receive goods from Spain except Nombre de Dios. When Argentina purchased goods from Spain they were despatched across the Atlantic to Nombre de Dios, carried by mule across the Isthmus, transhipped to Callao, and then taken over innumerable mountains into the River Plate country. Merely to state such a system is to condemn it, but there was no possibility of altering it, because the whole shipping trade of Spain was in the hands of a syndicate of Cadiz merchants, and they were all-powerful.