privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days, according to the permission
granted him by the pope, in the bull called the Cruzada. He received
another annual million from the Sussidio and the Excusado. The first was
a permission originally given by the popes to levy six hundred thousand
dollars a year upon ecclesiastical property for equipment of a hundred
war-galleys against the Saracens, but which had more recently established
itself as a regular tax to pay for naval hostilities against Dutch and
English heretics--a still more malignant species of unbelievers in the
orthodox eyes of the period. The Excusado was the right accorded to the
king always to select from the Church possessions a single benefice and
to appropriate its fruit--a levy commuted generally for four hundred
thousand dollars a year. Besides these regular sources of income, large
but irregular amounts of money were picked up by his Majesty in small
sums, through monks sent about the country simply as beggars, under no
special license, to collect alms from rich and poor for sustaining the
war against the infidels of England and Holland. A certain Jesuit, father
Sicily by name, had been industrious enough at one period in preaching
this crusade to accumulate more than a million and a half, so that a
facetious courtier advised his sovereign to style himself thenceforth
king, not of the two, but of the three Sicilies, in honour of the
industrious priest.

It is worthy of remark that at different periods during Philip's reign,
and especially towards its close, the whole of his regular revenue was
pledged to pay the interest, on his debts, save only the Sussidio and the
Cruzada. Thus the master of the greatest empire of the earth had at times
no income at his disposal except the alma he could solicit from his
poorest subjects to maintain his warfare against foreign miscreants, the
levy on the Church for war-galleys; and the proceeds of his permission to
eat meat on Fridays. This sounds like an epigram, but it is a plain,
incontestable fact.

Thus the revenues of his foreign dominions being nearly consumed by their
necessary expenses, the measure of his positive wealth was to be found in
the riches of Spain. But Spain at that day was not an opulent country. It
was impossible that it should be rich, for nearly every law, according to
which the prosperity of a country becomes progressive; was habitually
violated. It is difficult to state even by approximation the a