The low price of grain, which was imported in huge quantities from Sicily and other Roman provinces, operated to crush the small holder, at the same time as it made arable farming unremunerative.
But the growth of expenditure - chiefly of an unremunerative kind, such as the cost of war and missions - soon rendered these resources inadequate; and after 1515 the empire became ever more dependent on the spoils of hostile states and on subsidies from the royal treasury in Lisbon.
He frittered away the resources of the kingdom in the unremunerative Swedish war of 1675-79, and did nothing for internal progress in the twenty years of peace which followed.
His unwearied activity and inordinate vanity led him to undertake a great many costly public works, many of them, such as the erection of palaces and churches, unremunerative.
Even there, however, the pursuit is understood to be unremunerative, and has failed to attract European capital.