Mercantilist legislation went beyond attempts at controlling balances of trade and encouraging shipbuilding. Good mercantilists recognized that people too were important to the economic power of the nation. These theorists held that large populations were good and that individuals, especially skilled, ‘useful’ individuals, were a valued national resource. It follows that the same kind of laws that strove to restrict the export of specie also tried to control the movement of people. The legislation of various European states aimed at keeping nationals, particularly skilled, valued nationals, at home while at the same time encouraging useful foreigners to settle. With certain restrictions, the British extended this policy to the New World, while the Spaniards, Portuguese, and French did not. Or so the colonial laws of these powers might seem to suggest.

Yet Spanish law in Europe complied fully with the mercantilist rationale. The Laws of Castile required a royal license for anyone planning to leave Spain ‘with his house and family’, while foreigners might immigrate freely and receive for a period of years exemption from certain taxes and service obligations. With the exception of some offices from which they were excluded, foreigners in Spain were otherwise equal to the native-born in all legal matters. This attitude remained in the minds of most Spanish administrators from the king downward, and they persisted in applying it to the Indies as well as Castile.