population of Antwerp
had sunk almost as rapidly as that of its rival had increased; having
lessened by fifty thousand during the same period. The commercial capital
of the obedient provinces, having already lost much of its famous traffic
by the great changes in the commercial current of the world, was unable
to compete with the cities of the United Provinces in the vast trade
which the geographical discoveries of the preceding century had opened to
civilization. Freedom of thought and action were denied, and without such
liberty it was impossible for oceanic commerce to thrive. Moreover, the
possession by the Hollanders of the Scheld forts below Antwerp, and of
Flushing at the river's mouth, suffocated the ancient city, and would of
itself have been sufficient to paralyze all its efforts.

In Antwerp the exchange, where once thousands of the great merchants of
the earth held their daily financial parliament, now echoed to the
solitary footfall of the passing stranger. Ships lay rotting at the
quays; brambles grow in the commercial streets. In Amsterdam the city had
been enlarged by two-thirds, and those who swarmed thither to seek their
fortunes could not wait for the streets to be laid out and houses to be
built, but established themselves in the environs, building themselves
hovels and temporary residences, although certain to find their
encampments swept away with the steady expanse of the city. As much land
as could be covered by a man's foot was worth a ducat in gold.

In every branch of human industry these republicans took the lead. On
that scrap of solid ground, rescued by human energy from the ocean, were
the most fertile pastures in the world. On those pastures grazed the most
famous cattle in the world. An ox often weighed more than two thousand
pounds. The cows produced two and three calves at a time, the sheep four
and five lambs. In a single village four thousand kine were counted.
Butter and cheese were exported to the annual value of a million, salted
provisions to an incredible extent. The farmers were industrious,
thriving, and independent. It is an amusing illustration of the
agricultural thrift and republican simplicity of this people that on one
occasion a farmer proposed to Prince Maurice that he should marry his
daughter, promising with her a dowry of a hundred thousand florins.

The mechanical ingenuity of the Netherlanders, already celebrated by
Julius Caesar and by Tacitus, had lost nothing