s to the florin. A pound weight of wheat was worth
about one farthing. Yet this was forty-one years after the discovery of
the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and full sixteen years after the epoch;
from which is dated that rapid fall in the value of silver, which in the
course of seventy years, caused the average price of corn and of all
other commodities, to be tripled or even quadrupled. At that very moment
the average cost of wheat in England was sixty-four shillings the
quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling the bushel, and in the
markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all others, the same prices
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 ha