to more than five hundred; on market days the number amounted to eight or nine hundred. Daily more than two hundred carriages drove through its gates; above two thousand loaded wagons arrived every week from Germany, France, and Lorraine, without reckoning the farmers' carts and corn-vans, which were seldom less than ten thousand in number. Thirty thousand hands were employed by the English company alone. The market dues, tolls, and excise brought millions to the government annually. We can form some idea of the resources of the nation from the fact that the extraordinary taxes which they were obliged to pay to Charles V. towards his numerous wars were computed at forty millions of gold ducats.
For this affluence the Netherlands were as much indebted to their liberty as to the natural advantages of their country. Uncertain laws and the despotic sway of a rapacious prince would quickly have blighted all the blessings which propitious nature had so abundantly lavished on them. The inviolable sanctity of the laws can alone secure to the citizen the fruits of his industry, and inspire him with that happy confidence which is the soul of all activity.
The genius of this people, developed by the spirit of commerce, and by the intercourse with so many nations, shone in useful inventions; in the lap of abundance and liberty all the noble arts were carefully cultivated and carried to perfection. From Italy, to which Cosmo de Medici had lately restored its golden age, painting, architecture, and the arts of carving and of engraving on copper, were transplanted into the Netherlands, where, in a new soil, they flourished with fresh vigor. The Flemish school, a daughter of the Italian, soon vied with its mother for the prize; and, in common with it, gave laws to the whole of Europe in the fine arts. The manufactures and arts, on which the Netherlanders principally founded their prosperity, and still partly base it, require no particular enumeration. The weaving of tapestry, oil painting, the art of painting on glass, even pocketwatches and sun-dials were, as Guicciardini asserts, originally invented in the Netherlands. To them we are indebted for the improvement of the compass, the points of which are still known by Flemish names. About the year 1430 the invention of typography is ascribed to Laurence Koster, of Haarlem; and whether or not he is entitled to this honorable distinction, certain it is that the Dutch were among the first to engraft this useful art among them; and fate ordained that a century later it should reward its country with liberty. The people of the Netherlands united with the most fertile genius for inventions a happy talent for improving the discoveries of others; there are probably few mechanical arts and manufactures which they did not either produce or at least carry to a higher degree of perfection.
Up to this time these provinces had formed the most enviable state in Europe. Not one of the Burgundian dukes had ventured to indulge a thought of overturning the constitution; it had remained sacred even to the daring spirit of Charles the Bold, while he was preparing fetters for foreign liberty. All these princes grew up with no higher hope than to be the heads of a republic, and none of their territories afforded them experience of a higher authority. Besides, these princes possessed nothing but what the Netherlands gave them; no armies but those which the nation sent into the field; no riches but what the estates granted to them. Now all was changed. The Netherlands had fallen to a master who had at his command other instruments and other resources, who could arm against them a foreign power.
[The unnatural union of two such different nations as the Belgians
and Spaniards could not possibly be prosperous. I cannot here
refrain from quoting the comparison which Grotius, in energetic
language, has drawn between the two. 'With the neighboring
nations,' says he, 'the people of the Netherlands could easily
maintain a good understanding, for they were of a similar origin
with themselves, and had grown up in the same manner. But the
people of Spain and of the Netherlands differed in almost every
respect from one another, and therefore, when they were brought
together clashed the more violently. Both had for many centuries
been distinguished in war, only the latter had, in luxurious
repose, become disused to arms, while the former had been inured to
war in the Italian and African campaigns; the desire of gain made
the Belgians more inclined to peace, but not less sensitive of
offence. No people were more free from the lust of conquest, but
none defended its own more zealously. Hence the numerous towns,
closely pressed together in a confined tract of country; densely
crowded with a foreign and native population; fortified near the
sea and the great rivers. Hence for eight centuries after the
northern immigration foreign arms could not prevail against them.
Spain, on the contrary, often changed its masters; and when at last
it fell into the hands of the Goths, its character and its manners
had suffered more or less from each new conqueror. The people thus
formed at last out of these several admixtures is described as
patient in labor, imperturbable in danger, equally eager for riches
and honor, proud of itself even to contempt of others, devout and
grateful to strangers for any act of kindness, but also revengeful,
and of such ungovernable passions in victory as so regard neither
conscience nor honor in the case of an enemy. All this is foreign
to the character of the Belgian, who is astute but not insidious,
who, placed midway between France and Germany, combines in
moderation the faults and good qualities of both. He is not easily
to be imposed upon, nor is he to be insulted with impunity. In
veneration for the Deity, too, he does not yield to the Spaniard;
the arms of the Northmen could not make him apostatize from
Christianity when he had once professed it. No opinion which the
church condemns had, up to this time, empoisoned the purity of his
faith. Nay, his pious extravagance went so far that it became
requisite to curb by laws the rapacity of his clergy. In both
people loyalty to their rulers is equally innate, with this
difference, that the Belgian places the law above kings. Of all
the Spaniards the Castilians require to be, governed with the most
caution; but the liberties which they arrogate for themselves they
do not willingly accord to others. Hence the difficult task to
their common ruler, so to distribute his attention, and care
between the two nations that neither the preference shown to the
Castilian should offend the Belgian, nor the equal treatment of the
Belgian affront the haughty spirit of the Castilian.'-Grotii
Annal. Belg. L. 1. 4. 5. seq.]
Charles V. was an absolute monarch in his Spanish dominions; in the Netherlands he was no more than the first citizen. In the southern portion of his empire he might have learned contempt for the rights of individuals; here he was taught to respect them. The more he there tasted the pleasures of unlimited power, and the higher he raised his opinion of his own greatness, the more reluctant he must have felt to descend elsewhere to the ordinary level of humanity, and to tolerate any check upon his arbitrary authority. It requires, indeed, no ordinary degree of virtue to abstain from warring against the power which imposes a curb on our most cherished wishes.
The superior power of Charles awakened at the same time in the Netherlands that distrust which always accompanies inferiority. Never were they so alive to their constitutional rights, never so jealous of the royal prerogative, or more observant in their proceedings. Under, his reign we see the most violent outbreaks of republican spirit, and the pretensions of the people carried to an excess which nothing but the increasing encroachments of the royal power could in the least justify. A Sovereign will always regard the freedom of the citizen as an alienated fief, which he is bound to recover. To the citizen the authority of a sovereign is a torrent, which, by its inundation, threatens to sweep away his rights. The Belgians sought to protect themselves against the ocean by embankments, and against their princes by constitutional enactments. The whole history of the world is a perpetually recurring struggle between liberty and the lust of power and possession; as the history of nature is nothing but the contest of the elements and organic bodies for space. The Netherlands soon found to their cost that
