The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1569-70 | Page 5

taxation, struck home to every fireside. No individual, however
adroit or time-serving, could parry the blow by which all were crushed.
It was most unanswerably maintained in the assembly, that this tenth
and twentieth penny would utterly destroy the trade and the
manufactures of the country. The hundredth penny, or the one per cent.
assessment on all property throughout the land, although a severe

subsidy, might be borne with for once. To pay, however, a twentieth
part of the full value of a house to the government as often as the house
was sold, was a most intolerable imposition. A house might be sold
twenty times in a year, and in the course, therefore, of the year be
confiscated in its whole value. It amounted either to a prohibition of all
transfers of real estate, or to an eventual surrender of its price.
As to the tenth penny upon articles of merchandise, to be paid by the
vendor at every sale, the scheme was monstrous. All trade and
manufactures must, of necessity, expire, at the very first attempt to put
it in execution. The same article might be sold ten times in a week, and
might therefore pay one hundred per cent. weekly. An article, moreover,
was frequently compounded of ten, different articles, each of which
might pay one hundred per cent., and therefore the manufactured article,
if ten times transferred, one thousand per cent. weekly. Quick transfers
and unfettered movements being the nerves and muscles of commerce,
it was impossible for it long to survive the paralysis of such a tax. The
impost could never be collected, and would only produce an entire
prostration of industry. It could by no possibility enrich the
government.
The King could not derive wealth from the ruin of his subjects; yet to
establish such a system was the stern and absurd determination of the
Governor-general. The infantine simplicity of the effort seemed
incredible. The ignorance was as sublime as the tyranny. The most
lucid arguments and the most earnest remonstrances were all in vain.
Too opaque to be illumined by a flood of light, too hard to be melted by
a nation's tears, the Viceroy held calmly to his purpose. To the keen
and vivid representations of Viglius, who repeatedly exhibited all that
was oppressive and all that was impossible in the tax, he answered
simply that it was nothing more nor less than the Spanish "alcabala,"
and that he derived 50,000 ducats yearly from its imposition in his own
city of Alva.
Viglius was upon this occasion in opposition to the Duke. It is but
justice to state that the learned jurisconsult manfully and repeatedly
confronted the wrath of his superior in many a furious discussion in
council upon the subject. He had never essayed to snatch one brand
from the burning out of the vast holocaust of religious persecution, but
he was roused at last by the threatened destruction of all the material

interests of the land. He confronted the tyrant with courage, sustained
perhaps by the knowledge that the proposed plan was not the King's,
but the Governor's. He knew that it was openly ridiculed in Madrid, and
that Philip, although he would probably never denounce it in terms,
was certainly not eager for its execution. The President enlarged upon
the difference which existed between the condition of a
sparsely-peopled country of herdsmen and laborers in Spain, and the
densely-thronged and bustling cities of the Netherlands. If the Duke
collected 50,000 ducats yearly from the alcabala in Alva, he could only
offer him his congratulations, but could not help assuring him that the
tax would prove an impossibility in the provinces. To his argument,
that the impost would fall with severity not upon the highest nor the
lowest classes of society, neither upon the great nobility and clergy nor
on the rustic population, but on the merchants and manufacturers, it
was answered by the President that it was not desirable to rob Saint
Peter's altar in order to build one to Saint Paul. It might have been
simpler to suggest that the consumer would pay the tax, supposing it
were ever paid at all, but the axiom was not so familiar three centuries
ago as now.
Meantime, the report of the deputies to the assembly on their return to
their constituents had created the most intense excitement and alarm.
Petition after petition, report after report, poured in upon the
government. There was a cry of despair, and almost of defiance, which
had not been elicited by former agonies. To induce, however, a more
favorable disposition on the part of the Duke, the hundredth penny,
once for all, was conceded by the estates. The tenth and twentieth
occasioned--severe and protracted struggles, until the various
assemblies of the patrimonial provinces, one after another, exhausted,