ty." In their
eyes the great thing to be done was to make things cheap. They therefore
affixed a very low maximum price to everything which could be eaten, and
prescribed severe penalties for all who should attempt to take more than
the sum by law decreed. If a baker refused to sell his bread for a price
which would have been adequate only in a time of great plenty, his shop
was to be broken open, and his loaves distributed among the populace.
The consequences of this idiotic policy were twofold.

In the first place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
breadstuffs or other provisions from being brought into the city. It was
a long time before Farnese succeeded in so blockading the Scheldt as
to prevent ships laden with eatables from coming in below. Corn and
preserved meats might have been hurried by thousands of tons into the
beleaguered city. Friendly Dutch vessels, freighted with abundance, were
waiting at the mouth of the river. But all to no purpose. No merchant
would expose his valuable ship, with its cargo, to the risk of being
sunk by Farnese's batteries, merely for the sake of finding a market no
better than a hundred others which could be entered without incurring
danger. No doubt if the merchants of Holland had followed out the maxim
Vivre pour autrui, they would have braved ruin and destruction rather
than behold their neighbours of Antwerp enslaved. No doubt if they could
have risen to a broad philosophic view of the future interests of the
Netherlands, they would have seen that Antwerp must be saved, no matter
if some of them were to lose money by it. But men do not yet sacrifice
themselves for their fellows, nor do they as a rule look far beyond the
present moment and its emergencies. And the business of government is to
legislate for men as they are, not as it is supposed they ought to be.
If provisions had brought a high price in Antwerp, they would have been
carried thither. As it was, the city, by its own stupidity, blockaded
itself far more effectually than Farnese could have done it.

In the second place, the enforced lowness of prices prevented any
general retrenchment on the part of the citizens. Nobody felt it
necessary to economize. Every one bought as much bread, and ate it as
freely, as if the government by insuring its cheapness had insured its
abundance. So the city lived in high spirits and in gleeful defiance of
its besiegers, until all at once provisions gave out, and the governm