History of the United Netherlands, 1607a | Page 8

be a tempting
pursuit for a proud and indolent race. It was no wonder therefore that
the business of the brigand, the smuggler, the professional mendicant
became from year to year more attractive and more overdone; while an
ever-thickening swarm of priests, friars, and nuns of every order,
engendered out of a corrupt and decaying society, increasing the
general indolence, immorality, and unproductive consumption, and
frightfully diminishing the productive force of the country, fed like
locusts upon what was left in the unhappy land. "To shirk labour,
infinite numbers become priests and friars," said, a good Catholic, in
the year 1608--[Gir. Soranzo].
Before the end of the reign of Philip III. the peninsula, which might
have been the granary of the world, did not produce food enough for its
own population. Corn became a regular article of import into Spain,
and would have come in larger quantities than it did had the industry of
the country furnished sufficient material to exchange for necessary
food.
And as if it had been an object of ambition with the priests and
courtiers who then ruled a noble country, to make at exactly this epoch
the most startling manifestation of human fatuity that the world had
ever seen, it was now resolved by government to expel by armed force
nearly the whole stock of intelligent and experienced labour,
agricultural and mechanical, from the country. It is unnecessary to
dwell long upon an event which, if it were not so familiarly known to
mankind, would seem almost incredible. But the expulsion of the
Moors is, alas! no exaggerated and imaginary satire, but a monument of
wickedness and insanity such as is not often seen in human history.
Already, in the very first years of the century, John Ribera, archbishop
of Valencia, had recommended and urged the scheme.
It was too gigantic a project to be carried into execution at once, but it
was slowly matured by the aid of other ecclesiastics. At last there were
indications, both human and divine, that the expulsion of these
miscreants could no longer be deferred. It was rumoured and believed
that a general conspiracy existed among the Moors to rise upon the
Government, to institute a general massacre, and, with the assistance of
their allies and relatives on the Barbary coast, to re-establish the empire
of the infidels.

A convoy of eighty ass-loads of oil on the way to Madrid had halted at
a wayside inn. A few flasks were stolen, and those who consumed it
were made sick. Some of the thieves even died, or were said to have
died, in consequence. Instantly the rumour flew from mouth to mouth,
from town to town, that the royal family, the court, the whole capital,
all Spain, were to be poisoned with that oil. If such were the scheme it
was certainly a less ingenious one than the famous plot by which the
Spanish Government was suspected but a few years before to have so
nearly succeeded in blowing the king, peers, and commons of England
into the air.
The proof of Moorish guilt was deemed all-sufficient, especially as it
was supported by supernatural evidence of the most portentous and
convincing kind. For several days together a dark cloud, tinged with
blood-red, had been seen to hang over Valencia.
In the neighbourhood of Daroca, a din of, drums and trumpets and the
clang of arms had been heard in the sky, just as a procession went out
of a monastery.
At Valencia the image of the Virgin had shed tears. In another place her
statue had been discovered in a state of profuse perspiration.
What more conclusive indications could be required as to the guilt of
the Moors? What other means devised for saving crown, church, and
kingdom from destruction but to expel the whole mass of unbelievers
from the soil which they had too long profaned?
Archbishop Ribera was fully sustained by the Archbishop of Toledo,
and the whole ecclesiastical body received energetic support from
Government.
Ribera had solemnly announced that the Moors were so greedy of
money, so determined to keep it, and so occupied with pursuits most
apt for acquiring it, that they had come to be the sponge of Spanish
wealth. The best proof of this, continued the reverend sage, was that,
inhabiting in general poor little villages and sterile tracts of country,
paying to the lords of the manor one third of the crops, and being
overladen with special taxes imposed only upon them, they
nevertheless became rich, while the Christians, cultivating the most
fertile land, were in abject poverty.
It seems almost incredible that this should not be satire. Certainly the
most delicate irony could not portray the vicious institutions under

which the magnificent territory and noble people of Spain were thus
doomed to ruin more