prevailed. A bushel of wheat in England was equal therefore to eight
bushels in Brussels.

Thus the silver mines, which were the Spanish King's property, had
produced their effect everywhere more signally than within the obedient
Provinces. The South American specie found its way to Philip's coffers,
thence to the paymasters of his troops in Flanders, and thence to the
commercial centres of Holland and England. Those countries, first to feel
and obey the favourable expanding impulse of the age, were moving surely
and steadily on before it to greatness. Prices were rising with
unexampled rapidity, the precious metals were comparatively a drug, a
world-wide commerce, such as had never been dreamed of, had become an
every-day concern, the arts and sciences and a most generous culture in
famous schools and universities, which had been founded in the midst of
tumult and bloodshed, characterized the republic, and the golden age of
English poetry, which was to make the Elizabethan era famous through all
time, had already begun.

In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the
only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the
pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany. Prices could not
sustain themselves in the face of depopulation. Where there was no
security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial
pursuits had become almost impossible. The small demand for labour had
caused it, as it were, to disappear, altogether. All men had become
beggars, brigands, or soldiers. A temporary reaction followed. There were
no producers. Suddenly it was discovered that no corn had been planted,
and that there was no harvest. A famine was the inevitable result. Prices
then rose with most frightful rapidity. The veertel of rye, which in the
previous year had been worth one florin at Brussels and Antwerp, rose in
the winter of 1586-7 to twenty, twenty-two, and even twenty-four florins;
and wheat advanced from one and one-third florin to thirty-two florins
the veertel. Other articles were proportionally increased in
market-value; but it is worthy of remark that mutton was quoted in the
midst of the famine at nine stuyvers (a little more than ninepence
sterling) the pound, and beef at fivepence, while a single cod-fish sold
for twenty-two florins. Thus wheat was worth sixpence sterling the pound
weight (reckoning the veertel of one hundred and twenty pounds at thirty