History of the United Netherlands, 1607a | Page 7

been nearly ten years of
another reign. The system, inaugurated by Charles and perfected by his

son, had reached its last expression under Philip III.
The evil done by father and son lived and bore plentiful fruit in the
epoch of the grandson. And this is inevitable in history. No generation
is long-lived enough to reap the harvest, whether of good or evil, which
it sows.
Philip II. had been indefatigable in evil, a thorough believer in his
supernatural mission as despot, not entirely without capacity for affairs,
personally absorbed by the routine of his bureau.
He was a king, as he understood the meaning of the kingly office. His
policy was continued after his death; but there was no longer a king.
That important regulator to the governmental machinery was wanting.
How its place was supplied will soon appear.
Meantime the organic functions were performed very much in the old
way. There was, at least, no lack of priests or courtiers.
Spain at this epoch had probably less than twelve millions of
inhabitants, although the statistics of those days cannot be relied upon
with accuracy. The whole revenue of the state was nominally sixteen or
seventeen millions of dollars, but the greater portion of that income was
pledged for many coming years to the merchants of Genoa. All the
little royal devices for increasing the budget by debasing the coin of the
realm, by issuing millions of copper tokens, by lowering the promised
rate of interest on Government loans, by formally repudiating both
interest and principal, had been tried, both in this and the preceding
reign, with the usual success. An inconvertible paper currency,
stimulating industry and improving morals by converting beneficent
commerce into baleful gambling--that fatal invention did not then exist.
Meantime, the legitimate trader and innocent citizen were harassed, and
the general public endangered, as much as the limited machinery of the
epoch permitted.
The available, unpledged revenue of the kingdom hardly amounted to
five millions of dollars a-year. The regular annual income of the church
was at least six millions. The whole personal property of the nation was
estimated in a very clumsy and unsatisfactory way, no doubt--at sixty
millions of dollars. Thus the income of the priesthood was ten per cent.
of the whole funded estate of the country, and at least a million a year
more than the income of the Government. Could a more biting epigram
be made upon the condition to which the nation had been reduced?

Labour was more degraded than ever. The industrious classes, if such
could be said to exist, were esteemed every day more and more
infamous. Merchants, shopkeepers, mechanics, were reptiles, as vilely,
esteemed as Jews, Moors, Protestants, or Pagans. Acquiring wealth by
any kind of production was dishonourable. A grandee who should
permit himself to sell the wool from his boundless sheep-walks
disgraced his caste, and was accounted as low as a merchant. To create
was the business of slaves and miscreants: to destroy was the
distinguishing attribute of Christians and nobles. To cheat, to pick, and
to steal, on the most minute and the most gigantic scale--these were
also among the dearest privileges of the exalted classes. No
merchandize was polluting save the produce of honest industry. To sell
places in church and state, the army, the navy, and the sacred tribunals
of law, to take bribes from rich and poor, high and low; in sums
infinitesimal or enormous, to pillage the exchequer in, every
imaginable form, to dispose of titles of honour, orders of chivalry, posts
in municipal council, at auction; to barter influence, audiences, official
interviews against money cynically paid down in rascal counters--all
this was esteemed consistent with patrician dignity.
The ministers, ecclesiastics, and those about court, obtaining a
monopoly of such trade, left the business of production and circulation
to their inferiors, while, as has already been sufficiently indicated,
religious fanaticism and a pride of race, which nearly amounted to
idiocy, had generated a scorn for labour even among the lowest orders.
As a natural consequence, commerce and the mechanical arts fell
almost exclusively into the hands of foreigners--Italians, English, and
French--who resorted in yearly increasing numbers to Spain for the
purpose of enriching. themselves by the industry which the natives
despised.
The capital thus acquired was at regular intervals removed from the
country to other lands, where wealth resulting from traffic or
manufactures was not accounted infamous.
Moreover, as the soil of the country was held by a few great proprietors
--an immense portion in the dead-hand of an insatiate and
ever-grasping church, and much of the remainder in vast entailed
estates--it was nearly impossible for the masses of the people to
become owners of any portion of the land. To be an agricultural

day-labourer at less than a beggar's wage could hardly