Sancho Panza was knight errant Don Quixote's squire. A duke and duchess named him governor of an insula (which means island but the place Panza was governor of was not an island). The duke and duchess were playing tricks on Don Quixote & Sancho Panza and his governorship was not likely to last. But Sancho resigned after just ten days anyway. Sancho was an illiterate farmer so he was an unlikely candidate to be a governor.
Don Quixote wrote a letter to Sancho advising him on how to be a good governor and Sancho responded. I have excerpts from those first. Then an excerpt with regulations that Sancho declared, which involve many price controls. These are described as good. There is no discussion of how price controls can cause problems like shortages. Also, "market-women" are called the worst people.
"DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA’S LETTER TO SANCHO PANZA, GOVERNOR OF THE ISLAND OF BARATARIA.
"Visit the gaols, the slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the governor is of great importance in such places; it comforts the prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release, it is the bugbear of the butchers who have then to give just weight, and it is the terror of the market-women for the same reason."
SANCHO PANZA’S LETTER TO DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA.
"I have visited the market-places, as your worship advises me, and yesterday I found a stall-keeper selling new hazel nuts and proved her to have mixed a bushel of old empty rotten nuts with a bushel of new; I confiscated the whole for the children of the charity-school, who will know how to distinguish them well enough, and I sentenced her not to come into the market-place for a fortnight; they told me I did bravely. I can tell your worship it is commonly said in this town that there are no people worse than the market-women, for they are all barefaced, unconscionable, and impudent, and I can well believe it from what I have seen of them in other towns."
"The secretary sealed the letter, and immediately dismissed the courier; and those who were carrying on the joke against Sancho putting their heads together arranged how he was to be dismissed from the government. Sancho spent the afternoon in drawing up certain ordinances relating to the good government of what he fancied the island; and he ordained that there were to be no provision hucksters in the State, and that men might import wine into it from any place they pleased, provided they declared the quarter it came from, so that a price might be put upon it according to its quality, reputation, and the estimation it was held in; and he that watered his wine, or changed the name, was to forfeit his life for it. He reduced the prices of all manner of shoes, boots, and stockings, but of shoes in particular, as they seemed to him to run extravagantly high. He established a fixed rate for servants’ wages, which were becoming recklessly exorbitant. He laid extremely heavy penalties upon those who sang lewd or loose songs either by day or night. He decreed that no blind man should sing of any miracle in verse, unless he could produce authentic evidence that it was true, for it was his opinion that most of those the blind men sing are trumped up, to the detriment of the true ones. He established and created an alguacil [sherrif] of the poor, not to harass them, but to examine them and see whether they really were so; for many a sturdy thief or drunkard goes about under cover of a make-believe crippled limb or a sham sore. In a word, he made so many good rules that to this day they are preserved there, and are called The constitutions of the great governor Sancho Panza."
Related posts:
Economics in Don Quixote, Part 1 (the "precautionary motive" for demanding money)
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