As so frequently happens, the best king has the shortest reign, and Ferdinand lived but thirteen years after falling heir to the crown. But these were years of tranquility and progress, during which impoverished Spain deigned to take stock of her own resources and did not go abroad to rob her neighbours. Internal improvements were carried out, roads and canals built, agriculture fostered, oppressive taxes equalized, ship–building and foreign trade encouraged. The nucleus of a navy was gathered, and at the end of this reign it consisted of more than eighty frigates and ships of the line, valued at sixty million dollars.
Strange as it may seem, the Church was the greatest enemy of the people—at least, of the people’s material welfare. In the time of Ferdinand VI it had a revenue of three hundred and fifty–nine million dollars, which was greater than that of the state, and there were one hundred and eighty thousand clerical or non–producing people connected with it. The king did not interfere with its liberties, but he took steps to limit the power of the Pope, so that indiscriminate appointments were prevented; and he hindered the work of the Inquisition so much that it had but ten victims during his reign, as against one thousand during the reign of his father, and was, at last, almost starved out!
By the Treaty of Aix–la–Chapelle, in 1748, the War of the Austrian Succession, into which Philip V had been drawn, was brought to a close and the heroic Maria Theresa confirmed in her rights. And though there was danger of trouble with England, over the “_asiento_,” it was obviated by concessions from Spain to the former’s great advantage. This _asiento_—literally a contract—was a special agreement by which the ships of England were entitled to trade to a certain extent with Spanish colonies, those of other nations being prohibited, especially in negro slaves from Africa.
The Seven Years’ War, which broke out in 1756 between Prussia and England on one hand, and Austria, France, and Sweden on the other, was a severe strain upon Spain’s neutrality, for both sides sought her aid. Ferdinand, however, wisely abstained from war, even though Pitt, the great English minister, offered him back Gibraltar, to reconquer which Spain had fought desperately and besieged in vain, with the assistance of the French. He still remained neutral, and Gibraltar yet rears its defiant crest under the folds of Britain’s flag.