No More Learning

The inviolable sanctity of the laws can alone secure to the
citizen the fruits of his industry, and inspire him with that happy
confidence which is the soul of all activity.

The genius of this people, developed by the spirit of commerce, and by
the intercourse with so many nations, shone in useful inventions; in the
lap of abundance and liberty all the noble arts were carefully
cultivated and carried to perfection. From Italy, to which Cosmo de
Medici had lately restored its golden age, painting, architecture, and
the arts of carving and of engraving on copper, were transplanted into
the Netherlands, where, in a new soil, they flourished with fresh vigor.
The Flemish school, a daughter of the Italian, soon vied with its mother
for the prize; and, in common with it, gave laws to the whole of Europe
in the fine arts. The manufactures and arts, on which the Netherlanders
principally founded their prosperity, and still partly base it, require
no particular enumeration. The weaving of tapestry, oil painting, the
art of painting on glass, even pocketwatches and sun-dials were, as
Guicciardini asserts, originally invented in the Netherlands. To them
we are indebted for the improvement of the compass, the points of which
are still known by Flemish names. About the year 1430 the invention of
typography is ascribed to Laurence Koster, of Haarlem; and whether or
not he is entitled to this honorable distinction, certain it is that the
Dutch were among the first to engraft this useful art among them; and
fate ordained that a century later it should reward its country with
liberty. The people of the Netherlands united with the most fertile
genius for inventions a happy talent for improving the discoveries of
others; there are probably few mechanical arts and manufactures which
they did not either produce or at least carry to a higher degree of
perfection.

Up to this time these provinces had formed the most enviable state in
Europe. Not one of the Burgundian dukes had ventured to indulge a
thought of overturning the constitution; it had remained sacred even to
the daring spirit of Charles the Bold, while he was preparing fetters
for foreign liberty. All these princes grew up with no higher hope than
to be the heads of a republic, and none of their territories afforded
them experience of a higher authority. Besides, these princes possessed
nothing but what the Netherlands gave them; no armies but those which
the nation sent into the field; no riches but what the estates granted
to them. Now all was changed. The Netherlands had fallen to a master
who had at his command other instruments and other resources, who could
arm against them a foreign power.

[The unnatural union of two such different nations as the Belgians
and Spaniards could not possibly be prosperous. I cannot here
refrain from quoting the comparison which Grotius, in energetic
language, has drawn between the two. "With the neighboring
nations," says he, "the people of the Netherlands could easily
maintain a good understanding, for they were of a similar origin
with themselves, and had grown up in the same manner. But the
people of Spain and of the Netherlands differed in almost every
respect from one another, and therefore, when they were brought
together clashed the more violently. Both had for many centuries
been distinguished in war, only the latter had, in luxurious
repose, become disused to arms, while the former had been inured to
war in the Italian and African campaigns; the desire of gain made
the Belgians more inclined to peace, but not less sensitive of
offence. No people were more free from the lust of conquest, but
none defended its own more zealously. Hence the numerous towns,
closely pressed together in a confined tract of country; densely
crowded with a foreign and native population; fortified near the
sea and the great rivers. Hence for eight centuries after the
northern immigration foreign arms could not prevail against them.
Spain, on the contrary, often changed its masters; and when at last
it fell into the hands of the Goths, its character and its manners
had suffered more or less from each new conqueror. The people thus
formed at last out of these several admixtures is described as
patient in labor, imperturbable in danger, equally eager for riches
and honor, proud of itself even to contempt of others, devout and
grateful to strangers for any act of kindness, but also revengeful,
and of such ungovernable passions in victory as so regard neither
conscience nor honor in the case of an enemy. All this is foreign
to the character of the Belgian, who is astute but not insidious,
who, placed midway between France and Germany, combines in
moderation the faults and good qualities of both. He is not easily
to be imposed upon, nor is he to be insulted with impunity. In
veneration for the Deity, too, he does not yield to the Spaniard;
the arms of the Northmen could not make him apostatize from
Christianity when he had once professed it. No opinion which the
church condemns had, up to this time, empoisoned the purity of his
faith. Nay, his pious extravagance went so far that it became
requisite to curb by laws the rapacity of his clergy. In both
people loyalty to their rulers is equally innate, with this
difference, that the Belgian places the law above kings. Of all
the Spaniards the Castilians require to be, governed with the most
caution; but the liberties which they arrogate for themselves they
do not willingly accord to others. Hence the difficult task to
their common ruler, so to distribute his attention, and care
between the two nations that neither the preference shown to the
Castilian should offend the Belgian, nor the equal treatment of the
Belgian affront the haughty spirit of the Castilian. "--Grotii
Annal. Belg. L. 1. 4. 5. seq. ]

Charles V. was an absolute monarch in his Spanish dominions; in the
Netherlands he was no more than the first citizen. In the southern
portion of his empire he might have learned contempt for the rights of
individuals; here he was taught to respect them. The more he there
tasted the pleasures of unlimited power, and the higher he raised his
opinion of his own greatness, the more reluctant he must have felt to
descend elsewhere to the ordinary level of humanity, and to tolerate any
check upon his arbitrary authority. It requires, indeed, no ordinary
degree of virtue to abstain from warring against the power which imposes
a curb on our most cherished wishes.

The superior power of Charles awakened at the same time in the
Netherlands that distrust which always accompanies inferiority. Never
were they so alive to their constitutional rights, never so jealous of
the royal prerogative, or more observant in their proceedings. Under,
his reign we see the most violent outbreaks of republican spirit, and
the pretensions of the people carried to an excess which nothing but the
increasing encroachments of the royal power could in the least justify.
A Sovereign will always regard the freedom of the citizen as an
alienated fief, which he is bound to recover. To the citizen the
authority of a sovereign is a torrent, which, by its inundation,
threatens to sweep away his rights. The Belgians sought to protect
themselves against the ocean by embankments, and against their princes
by constitutional enactments. The whole history of the world is a
perpetually recurring struggle between liberty and the lust of power and
possession; as the history of nature is nothing but the contest of the
elements and organic bodies for space. The Netherlands soon found to
their cost that they had become but a province of a great monarchy. So
long as their former masters had no higher aim than to promote their
prosperity, their condition resembled the tranquil happiness of a
secluded family, whose head is its ruler. Charles V. introduced them
upon the arena of the political world. They now formed a member of that
gigantic body which the ambition of an individual employed as his
instrument. They ceased to have their own good for their aim; the
centre of their existence was transported to the soul of their ruler.
As his whole government was but one tissue of plans and manoeuvres to
advance his power, so it was, above all things, necessary that he should
be completely master of the various limbs of his mighty empire in order
to move them effectually and suddenly. It was impossible, therefore,
for him to embarrass himself with the tiresome mechanism of their
interior political organization, or to extend to their peculiar
privileges the conscientious respect which their republican jealousy
demanded. It was expedient for him to facilitate the exercise of their
powers by concentration and unity. The tribunal at Malines had been
under his predecessor an independent court of judicature; he subjected
its decrees to the revision of a royal council, which he established in
Brussels, and which was the mere organ of his will. He introduced
foreigners into the most vital functions of their constitution, and
confided to them the most important offices. These men, whose only
support was the royal favor, would be but bad guardians of privileges
which, moreover, were little known to them. The ever-increasing
expenses of his warlike government compelled him as steadily to augment
his resources. In disregard of their most sacred privileges he imposed
new and strange taxes on the provinces. To preserve their olden
consideration the estates were forced to grant what he had been so
modest as not to extort; the whole history of the government of this
monarch in the Netherlands is almost one continued list of imposts
demanded, refused, and finally accorded. Contrary to the constitution,
he introduced foreign troops into their territories, directed the
recruiting of his armies in the provinces, and involved them in wars,
which could not advance even if they did not injure their interest, and
to which they had not given their consent. He punished the offences of
a free state as a monarch; and the terrible chastisement of Ghent
announced to the other provinces the great change which their
constitution had already undergone.

The welfare of the country was so far secured as was necessary to the
political schemes of its master; the intelligent policy of Charles would
certainly not violate the salutary regiment of the body whose energies
he found himself necessitated to exert. Fortunately, the opposite
pursuits of selfish ambition, and of disinterested philanthropy, often
bring about the same end; and the well-being of a state, which a Marcus
Aurelius might propose to himself as a rational object of pursuit, is
occasionally promoted by an Augustus or a Louis.

Charles V. was perfectly aware that commerce was the strength of the
nation, and that the foundation of their commerce was liberty. He
spared its liberty because he needed its strength. Of greater political
wisdom, though not more just than his son, he adapted his principles to
the exigencies of time and place, and recalled an ordinance in Antwerp
and in Madrid which he would under other circumstances have enforced
with all the terrors of his power. That which makes the reign of
Charles V. particularly remarkable in regard to the Netherlands is the
great religious revolution which occurred under it; and which, as the
principal cause of the subsequent rebellion, demands a somewhat
circumstantial notice. This it was that first brought arbitrary power
into the innermost sanctuary of the constitution; taught it to give a
dreadful specimen of its might; and, in a measure, legalized it, while
it placed republican spirit on a dangerous eminence. And as the latter
sank into anarchy and rebellion monarchical power rose to the height of
despotism.

Nothing is more natural than the transition from civil liberty to
religious freedom. Individuals, as well as communities, who, favored by
a happy political constitution, have become acquainted with the rights
of man, and accustomed to examine, if not also to create, the law which
is to govern them; whose minds have been enlightened by activity, and
feelings expanded by the enjoyments of life; whose natural courage has
been exalted by internal security and prosperity; such men will not
easily surrender themselves to the blind domination of a dull arbitrary
creed, and will be the first to emancipate themselves from its yoke.
Another circumstance, however, must have greatly tended to diffuse the
new religion in these countries. Italy, it might be objected, the seat
of the greatest intellectual culture, formerly the scene of the most
violent political factions, where a burning climate kindles the blood
with the wildest passions--Italy, among all the European countries,
remained the freest from this change. But to a romantic people, whom a
warm and lovely sky, a luxurious, ever young and ever smiling nature,
and the multifarious witcheries of art, rendered keenly susceptible of
sensuous enjoyment, that form of religion must naturally have been
better adapted, which by its splendid pomp captivates the senses, by its
mysterious enigmas opens an unbounded range to the fancy; and which,
through the most picturesque forms, labors to insinuate important
doctrines into the soul. On the contrary, to a people whom the ordinary
employments of civil life have drawn down to an unpoetical reality, who
live more in plain notions than in images, and who cultivate their
common sense at the expense of their imagination--to such a people that
creed will best recommend itself which dreads not investigation, which
lays less stress on mysticism than on morals, and which is rather to be
understood then to be dwelt upon in meditation. In few words, the Roman
Catholic religion will, on the whole, be found more adapted to a nation
of artists, the Protestant more fitted to a nation of merchants.

On this supposition the new doctrines which Luther diffused in Germany,
and Calvin in Switzerland, must have found a congenial soil in the
Netherlands. The first seeds of it were sown in the Netherlands by the
Protestant merchants, who assembled at Amsterdam and Antwerp. The
German and Swiss troops, which Charles introduced into these countries,
and the crowd of French, German, and English fugitives who, under the
protection of the liberties of Flanders, sought to escape the sword of
persecution which threatened them at home, promoted their diffusion. A
great portion of the Belgian nobility studied at that time at Geneva, as
the University of Louvain was not yet in repute, and that of Douai not
yet founded. The new tenets publicly taught there were transplanted by
the students to their various countries. In an isolated people these
first germs might easily have been crushed; but in the market-towns of
Holland and Brabant, the resort of so many different nations, their
first growth would escape the notice of government, and be accelerated
under the veil of obscurity. A difference in opinion might easily
spring up and gain ground amongst those who already were divided in
national character, in manners, customs, and laws. Moreover, in a
country where industry was the most lauded virtue, mendicity the most
abhorred vice, a slothful body of men, like that of the monks, must have
been an object of long and deep aversion. Hence, the new religion,
which opposed these orders, derived an immense advantage from having the
popular opinion on its side. Occasional pamphlets, full of bitterness
and satire, to which the newly-discovered art of printing secured a
rapid circulation, and several bands of strolling orators, called
Rederiker, who at that time made the circuit of the provinces,
ridiculing in theatrical representations or songs the abuses of their
times, contributed not a little to diminish respect for the Romish
Church, and to prepare the people for the reception of the new dogmas.

The first conquests of this doctrine were astonishingly rapid. The
number of those who in a short time avowed themselves its adherents,
especially in the northern provinces, was prodigious; but among these
the foreigners far outnumbered the natives. Charles V. , who, in this
hostile array of religious tenets, had taken the side which a despot
could not fail to take, opposed to the increasing torrent of innovation
the most effectual remedies. Unhappily for the reformed religion
political justice was on the side of its persecutor. The dam which, for
so many centuries, had repelled human understanding from truth was too
suddenly torn away for the outbreaking torrent not to overflow its
appointed channel. The reviving spirit of liberty and of inquiry, which
ought to have remained within the limits of religious questions, began
also to examine into the rights of kings. While in the commencement
iron fetters were justly broken off, a desire was eventually shown to
rend asunder the most legitimate and most indispensable of ties. Even
the Holy Scriptures, which were now circulated everywhere, while they
imparted light and nurture to the sincere inquirer after truth, were the
source also whence an eccentric fanaticism contrived to extort the
virulent poison. The good cause had been compelled to choose the evil
road of rebellion, and the result was what in such cases it ever will be
so long as men remain men. The bad cause, too, which had nothing in
common with the good but the employment of illegal means, emboldened by
this slight point of connection, appeared in the same company, and was
mistaken for it. Luther had written against the invocation of saints;
every audacious varlet who broke into the churches and cloisters, and
plundered the altars, called himself Lutheran. Faction, rapine,
fanaticism, licentiousness robed themselves in his colors; the most
enormous offenders, when brought before the judges, avowed themselves
his followers. The Reformation had drawn down the Roman prelate to a
level with fallible humanity; an insane band, stimulated by hunger and
want, sought to annihilate all distinction of ranks. It was natural
that a doctrine, which to the state showed itself only in its most
unfavorable aspect, should not have been able to reconcile a monarch who
had already so many reasons to extirpate it; and it is no wonder,
therefore, that be employed against it the arms it had itself forced
upon him.

Charles must already have looked upon himself as absolute in the
Netherlands since he did not think it necessary to extend to these
countries the religious liberty which he had accorded to Germany.
While, compelled by the effectual resistance of the German princes, he
assured to the former country a free exercise of the new religion, in
the latter he published the most cruel edicts for its repression. By
these the reading of the Evangelists and Apostles; all open or secret
meetings to which religion gave its name in ever so slight a degree; all
conversations on the subject, at home or at the table, were forbidden
under severe penalties. In every province special courts of judicature
were established to watch over the execution of the edicts. Whoever
held these erroneous opinions was to forfeit his office without regard
to his rank. Whoever should be convicted of diffusing heretical
doctrines, or even of simply attending the secret meetings of the
Reformers, was to be condemned to death, and if a male, to be executed
by the sword, if a female, buried alive. Backsliding heretics were to
be committed to the flames. Not even the recantation of the offender
could annul these appalling sentences. Whoever abjured his errors
gained nothing by his apostacy but at farthest a milder kind of death.

The fiefs of the condemned were also confiscated, contrary to the
privileges of the nation, which permitted the heir to redeem them for a
trifling fine; and in defiance of an express and valuable privilege of
the citizens of Holland, by which they were not to be tried out of their
province, culprits were conveyed beyond the limits of the native
judicature, and condemned by foreign tribunals. Thus did religion guide
the hand of despotism to attack with its sacred weapon, and without
danger or opposition, the liberties which were inviolable to the secular
arm.

Charles V. , emboldened by the fortunate progress of his arms in Germany,
thought that he might now venture on everything, and seriously meditated
the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. But the
terror of its very name alone reduced commerce in Antwerp to a
standstill. The principal foreign merchants prepared to quit the city.
All buying and selling ceased, the value of houses fell, the employment
of artisans stopped. Money disappeared from the hands of the citizen.
The ruin of that flourishing commercial city was inevitable had not
Charles V. listened to the representations of the Duchess of Parma, and
abandoned this perilous resolve. The tribunal, therefore, was ordered
not to interfere with the foreign merchants, and the title of Inquisitor
was changed unto the milder appellation of Spiritual Judge. But in the
other provinces that tribunal proceeded to rage with the inhuman
despotism which has ever been peculiar to it. It has been computed that
during the reign of Charles V. fifty thousand persons perished by the
hand of the executioner for religion alone.

When we glance at the violent proceedings of this monarch we are quite
at a loss to comprehend what it was that kept the rebellion within
bounds during his reign, which broke out with so much violence under his
successor. A closer investigation will clear up this seeming anomaly.
Charles's dreaded supremacy in Europe had raised the commerce of the
Netherlands to a height which it had never before attained. The majesty
of his name opened all harbors, cleared all seas for their vessels, and
obtained for them the most favorable commercial treaties with foreign
powers. Through him, in particular, they destroyed the dominion of the
Hanse towns in the Baltic. Through him, also, the New World, Spain,
Italy, Germany, which now shared with them a common ruler, were, in a
measure, to be considered as provinces of their own country, and opened
new channels for their commerce. He had, moreover, united the remaining
six provinces with the hereditary states of Burgundy, and thus given to
them an extent and political importance which placed them by the side of
the first kingdoms of Europe.

[He had, too, at one time the intention of raising it to a kingdom;
but the essential points of difference between the provinces, which
extended from constitution and manners to measures and weights,
soon made him abandon this design. More important was the service
which he designed them in the Burgundian treaty, which settled its
relation to the German empire. According to this treaty the
seventeen provinces were to contribute to the common wants of the
German empire twice as much as an electoral prince; in case of a
Turkish war three times as much; in return for which, however, they
were to enjoy the powerful protection of this empire, and not to be
injured in any of their various privileges. The revolution, which
under Charles' son altered the political constitution of the
provinces, again annulled this compact, which, on account of the
trifling advantage that it conferred, deserves no further notice. ]

By all this he flattered the national pride of this people. Moreover,
by the incorporation of Gueldres, Utrecht, Friesland, and Groningen with
these provinces, he put an end to the private wars which had so long
disturbed their commerce; an unbroken internal peace now allowed them to
enjoy the full fruits of their industry. Charles was therefore a
benefactor of this people. At the same time, the splendor of his
victories dazzled their eyes; the glory of their sovereign, which was
reflected upon them also, had bribed their republican vigilance; while
the awe-inspiring halo of invincibility which encircled the conqueror of
Germany, France, Italy, and Africa terrified the factious. And then,
who knows not on how much may venture the man, be he a private
individual or a prince, who has succeeded in enchaining the admiration
of his fellow-creatures! His repeated personal visits to these lands,
which he, according to his own confession, visited as often as ten
different times, kept the disaffected within bounds; the constant
exercise of severe and prompt justice maintained the awe of the royal
power. Finally, Charles was born in the Netherlands, and loved the
nation in whose lap he had grown up. Their manners pleased him, the
simplicity of their character and social intercourse formed for him a
pleasing recreation from the severe Spanish gravity. He spoke their
language, and followed their customs in his private life. The
burdensome ceremonies which form the unnatural barriers between king and
people were banished from Brussels. No jealous foreigner debarred
natives from access to their prince; their way to him was through their
own countrymen, to whom he entrusted his person. He spoke much and
courteously with them; his deportment was engaging, his discourse
obliging. These simple artifices won for him their love, and while
his armies trod down their cornfields, while his rapacious imposts
diminished their property, while his governors oppressed, his
executioners slaughtered, he secured their hearts by a friendly
demeanor.

Gladly would Charles have seen this affection of the nation for himself
descend upon his son. On this account he sent for him in his youth from
Spain, and showed him in Brussels to his future subjects. On the solemn
day of his abdication he recommended to him these lands as the richest
jewel in his crown, and earnestly exhorted him to respect their laws and
privileges.

Philip II. was in all the direct opposite of his father. As ambitious
as Charles, but with less knowledge of men and of the rights of man, he
had formed to himself a notion of royal authority which regarded men as
simply the servile instruments of despotic will, and was outraged by
every symptom of liberty. Born in Spain, and educated under the iron
discipline of the monks, he demanded of others the same gloomy formality
and reserve as marked his own character. The cheerful merriment of his
Flemish subjects was as uncongenial to his disposition and temper as
their privileges were offensive to his imperious will. He spoke no
other language but the Spanish, endured none but Spaniards about his
person, and obstinately adhered to all their customs. In vain did the
loyal ingenuity of the Flemish towns through which he passed vie with
each other in solemnizing his arrival with costly festivities.

[The town of Antwerp alone expended on an occasion of this kind two
hundred and sixty thousand gold florins. ]

Philip's eye remained dark; all the profusion of magnificence, all the
loud and hearty effusions of the sincerest joy could not win from him
one approving smile.

Charles entirely missed his aim by presenting his son to the Flemings.
They might eventually have endured his yoke with less impatience if he
had never set his foot in their land. But his look forewarned them what
they had to expect; his entry into Brussels lost him all hearts. The
Emperor's gracious affability with his people only served to throw a
darker shade on the haughty gravity of his son. They read in his
countenance the destructive purpose against their liberties which, even
then, he already revolved in his breast. Forewarned to find in him a
tyrant they were forearmed to resist him.

The throne of the Netherlands was the first which Charles V. abdicated.
Before a solemn convention in Brussels he absolved the States-General of
their oath, and transferred their allegiance to King Philip, his son.
"If my death," addressing the latter, as he concluded, "had placed you
in possession of these countries, even in that case so valuable a
bequest would have given me great claims on your gratitude. But now
that of my free will I transfer them to you, now that I die in order to
hasten your enjoyment of them, I only require of you to pay to the
people the increased obligation which the voluntary surrender of my
dignity lays upon you. Other princes esteem it a peculiar felicity to
bequeath to their children the crown which death is already ravishing
from then. This happiness I am anxious to enjoy during my life. I wish
to be a spectator of your reign. Few will follow my example, as few
have preceded me in it. But this my deed will be praised if your future
life should justify my expectations, if you continue to be guided by
that wisdom which you have hitherto evinced, if you remain inviolably
attached to the pure faith which is the main pillar of your throne. One
thing more I have to add: may Heaven grant you also a son, to whom you
may transmit your power by choice, and not by necessity. "

After the Emperor had concluded his address Philip kneeled down before
him, kissed his hand, and received his paternal blessing. His eyes for
the last time were moistened with a tear. All present wept. It was an
hour never to be forgotten.

This affecting farce was soon followed by another. Philip received the
homage of the assembled states. He took the oath administered in the
following words: "I, Philip, by the grace of God, Prince of Spain, of
the two Sicilies, etc. , do vow and swear that I will be a good and just
lord in these countries, counties, and duchies, etc. ; that I will well
and truly hold, and cause to be held, the privileges and liberties of
all the nobles, towns, commons, and subjects which have been conferred
upon them by my predecessors, and also the customs, usages and rights
which they now have and enjoy, jointly and severally, and, moreover,
that I will do all that by law and right pertains to a good and just
prince and lord, so help me God and all His Saints. "

The alarm which the arbitrary government of the Emperor had inspired,
and the distrust of his son, are already visible in the formula of this
oath, which was drawn up in far more guarded and explicit terms than
that which had been administered to Charles V. himself and all the Dukes
in Burgundy. Philip, for instance, was compelled to swear to the
maintenance of their customs and usages, what before his time had never
been required. In the oath which the states took to him no other
obedience was promised than such as should be consistent with the
privileges of the country.
His officers then were only to reckon on
submission and support so long as they legally discharged the duties
entrusted to them. Lastly, in this oath of allegiance, Philip is simply
styled the natural, the hereditary prince, and not, as the Emperor had
desired, sovereign or lord; proof enough how little confidence was
placed in the justice and liberality of the new sovereign.




PHILIP II. , RULER OF THE NETHERLANDS.

Philip II. received the lordship of the Netherlands in the brightest
period of their prosperity. He was the first of their princes who
united them all under his authority. They now consisted of seventeen
provinces; the duchies of Brabant, Limburg, Luxembourg, and Gueldres,
the seven counties of Artois, Hainault, Flanders, Namur, Zutphen,
Holland, and Zealand, the margravate of Antwerp, and the five lordships
of Friesland, Mechlin (Malines), Utrecht, Overyssel, and Groningen,
which, collectively, formed a great and powerful state able to contend
with monarchies. Higher than it then stood their commerce could not
rise. The sources of their wealth were above the earth's surface, but
they were more valuable and inexhaustible and richer than all the mines
in America. These seventeen provinces which, taken together, scarcely
comprised the fifth part of Italy, and do not extend beyond three
hundred Flemish miles, yielded an annual revenue to their lord, not much
inferior to that which Britain formerly paid to its kings before the
latter had annexed so many of the ecclesiastical domains to their crown.
Three hundred and fifty cities, alive with industry and pleasure, many
of them fortified by their natural position and secure without bulwarks
or walls; six thousand three hundred market towns of a larger size;
smaller villages, farms, and castles innumerable, imparted to this
territory the aspect of one unbroken flourishing landscape. The nation
had now reached the meridian of its splendor; industry and abundance had
exalted the genius of the citizen, enlightened his ideas, ennobled his
affections; every flower of the intellect had opened with the
flourishing condition of the country. A happy temperament under a
severe climate cooled the ardor of their blood, and moderated the rage
of their passions; equanimity, moderation, and enduring patience, the
gifts of a northern clime; integrity, justice, and faith, the necessary
virtues of their profession; and the delightful fruits of liberty,
truth, benevolence, and a patriotic pride were blended in their
character, with a slight admixture of human frailties. No people on
earth was more easily governed by a prudent prince, and none with more
difficulty by a charlatan or a tyrant. Nowhere was the popular voice so
infallible a test of good government as here. True statesmanship could
be tried in no nobler school, and a sickly artificial policy had none
worse to fear.

A state constituted like this could act and endure with gigantic energy
whenever pressing emergencies called forth its powers and a skilful and
provident administration elicited its resources. Charles V. bequeathed
to his successor an authority in these provinces little inferior to that
of a limited monarchy. The prerogative of the crown had gained a
visible ascendancy over the republican spirit, and that complicated
machine could now be set in motion, almost as certainly and rapidly as
the most absolutely governed nation. The numerous nobility, formerly so
powerful, cheerfully accompanied their sovereign in his wars, or, on the
civil changes of the state, courted the approving smile of royality.
The crafty policy of the crown had created a new and imaginary good, of
which it was the exclusive dispenser. New passions and new ideas of
happiness supplanted at last the rude simplicity of republican virtue.
Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy
independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their
native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more
powerful allurement for the avarice and ambition of the great, than in
the general assembly of the state to share with the monarch a hundredth
part of the supreme power. A large portion, moreover, of the nobility
were deeply sunk in poverty and debt. Charles V. had crippled all the
most dangerous vassals of the crown by expensive embassies to foreign
courts, under the specious pretext of honorary distinctions. Thus,
William of Orange was despatched to Germany with the imperial crown, and
Count Egmont to conclude the marriage contract between Philip and Queen
Mary. Both also afterwards accompanied the Duke of Alva to France to
negotiate the peace between the two crowns, and the new alliance of
their sovereign with Madame Elizabeth. The expenses of these journeys
amounted to three hundred thousand florins, towards which the king did
not contribute a single penny. When the Prince of Orange was appointed
generalissimo in the place of the Duke of Savoy he was obliged to defray
all the necessary expenses of his office. When foreign ambassadors or
princes came to Brussels it was made incumbent on the nobles to maintain
the honor of their king, who himself always dined alone, and never kept
open table. Spanish policy had devised a still more ingenious
contrivance gradually to impoverish the richest families of the land.
Every year one of the Castilian nobles made his appearance in Brussels,
where he displayed a lavish magnificence. In Brussels it was accounted
an indelible disgrace to be distanced by a stranger in such munificence.
All vied to surpass him, and exhausted their fortunes in this costly
emulation, while the Spaniard made a timely retreat to his native
country, and by the frugality of four years repaired the extravagance of
one year. It was the foible of the Netherlandish nobility to contest
with every stranger the credit of superior wealth, and of this weakness
the government studiously availed itself. Certainly these arts did not
in the sequel produce the exact result that had been calculated on; for
these pecuniary burdens only made the nobility the more disposed for
innovation, since he who has lost all can only be a gainer in the
general ruin.

The Roman Church had ever been a main support of the royal power, and it
was only natural that it should be so. Its golden time was the bondage
of the human intellect, and, like royalty, it had gained by the
ignorance and weakness of men. Civil oppression made religion more
necessary and more dear; submission to tyrannical power prepares the
mind for a blind, convenient faith, and the hierarchy repaid with usury
the services of despotism. In the provinces the bishops and prelates
were zealous supporters of royalty, and ever ready to sacrifice the
welfare of the citizen to the temporal advancement of the church and the
political interests of the sovereign.

Numerous and brave garrisons also held the cities in awe, which were
at the same time divided by religious squabbles and factions, and
consequently deprived of their strongest support--union among
themselves. How little, therefore, did it require to insure this
preponderance of Philip's power, and how fatal must have been the folly
by which it was lost.

But Philip's authority in these provinces, however great, did not
surpass the influence which the Spanish monarchy at that time enjoyed
throughout Europe. No state ventured to enter the arena of contest with
it. France, its most dangerous neighbor, weakened by a destructive war,
and still more by internal factions, which boldly raised their heads
during the feeble government of a child, was advancing rapidly to that
unhappy condition which, for nearly half a century, made it a theatre of
the most enormous crimes and the most fearful calamities. In England
Elizabeth could with difficulty protect her still tottering throne
against the furious storms of faction, and her new church establishment
against the insidious arts of the Romanists. That country still awaited
her mighty call before it could emerge from a humble obscurity, and had
not yet been awakened by the faulty policy of her rival to that vigor
and energy with which it finally overthrew him. The imperial family of
Germany was united with that of Spain by the double ties of blood and
political interest; and the victorious progress of Soliman drew its
attention more to the east than to the west of Europe. Gratitude and
fear secured to Philip the Italian princes, and his creatures ruled the
Conclave. The monarchies of the North still lay in barbarous darkness
and obscurity, or only just began to acquire form and strength, and were
as yet unrecognized in the political system of Europe. The most skilful
generals, numerous armies accustomed to victory, a formidable marine,
and the golden tribute from the West Indies, which now first began to
come in regularly and certainly--what terrible instruments were these in
the firm and steady hand of a talented prince Under such auspicious
stars did King Philip commence his reign.

Before we see him act we must first look hastily into the deep recesses
of his soul, and we shall there find a key to his political life. Joy
and benevolence were wholly wanting in the composition of his character.
His temperament, and the gloomy years of his early childhood, denied him
the former; the latter could not be imparted to him by men who had
renounced the sweetest and most powerful of the social ties. Two ideas,
his own self and what was above that self, engrossed his narrow and
contracted mind. Egotism and religion were the contents and the
title-page of the history of his whole life. He was a king and a
Christian, and was bad in both characters; he never was a man among men,
because he never condescended but only ascended. His belief was dark and
cruel; for his divinity was a being of terror, from whom he had nothing
to hope but everything to fear. To the ordinary man the divinity appears
as a comforter, as a Saviour; before his mind it was set up as an image
of fear, a painful, humiliating check to his human omnipotence. His
veneration for this being was so much the more profound and deeply rooted
the less it extended to other objects. He trembled servilely before God
because God was the only being before whom he had to tremble. Charles V.
was zealous for religion because religion promoted his objects. Philip
was so because he had real faith in it. The former let loose the fire and
the sword upon thousands for the sake of a dogma, while he himself, in
the person of the pope, his captive, derided the very doctrine for which
he had sacrificed so much human blood. It was only with repugnance and
scruples of conscience that Philip resolved on the most just war against
the pope, and resigned all the fruits of his victory as a penitent
malefactor surrenders his booty. The Emperor was cruel from calculation,
his son from impulse. The first possessed a strong and enlightened
spirit, and was, perhaps, so much the worse as a man; the second was
narrow-minded and weak, but the more upright.

Both, however, as it appears to me, might have been better men than they
actually were, and still, on the whole, have acted on the very same
principles. What we lay to the charge of personal character of an
individual is very often the infirmity, the necessary imperfection of
universal human nature. A monarchy so great and so powerful was too
great a trial for human pride, and too mighty a charge for human power.
To combine universal happiness with the highest liberty of the
individual is the sole prerogative of infinite intelligence, which
diffuses itself omnipresently over all. But what resource has man
when placed in the position of omnipotence? Man can only aid his
circumscribed powers by classification; like the naturalist, he
establishes certain marks and rules by which to facilitate his own
feeble survey of the whole, to which all individualities must conform.
All this is accomplished for him by religion. She finds hope and fear
planted in every human breast; by making herself mistress of these
emotions, and directing their affections to a single object, she
virtually transforms millions of independent beings into one uniform
abstract. The endless diversity of the human will no longer embarrasses
its ruler--now there exists one universal good, one universal evil,
which he can bring forward or withdraw at pleasure, and which works in
unison with himself even when absent. Now a boundary is established
before which liberty must halt; a venerable, hallowed line, towards
which all the various conflicting inclinations of the will must finally
converge. The common aim of despotism and of priestcraft is uniformity,
and uniformity is a necessary expedient of human poverty and
imperfection. Philip became a greater despot than his father because
his mind was more contracted, or, in other words, he was forced to
adhere the more scrupulously to general rules the less capable he was of
descending to special and individual exceptions. What conclusion could
we draw from these principles but that Philip II. could not possibly
have any higher object of his solicitude than uniformity, both in
religion and in laws, because without these he could not reign?

And yet he would have shown more mildness and forbearance in his
government if he had entered upon it earlier. In the judgment which is
usually formed of this prince one circumstance does not appear to be
sufficiently considered in the history of his mind and heart, which,
however, in all fairness, ought to be duly weighed. Philip counted
nearly thirty years when he ascended the Spanish throne, and the early
maturity of his understanding had anticipated the period of his
majority. A mind like his, conscious of its powers, and only too early
acquainted with his high expectations, could not brook the yoke of
childish subjection in which he stood; the superior genius of the
father, and the absolute authority of the autocrat, must have weighed
heavily on the self-satisfied pride of such a son. The share which the
former allowed him in the government of the empire was just important
enough to disengage his mind from petty passions and to confirm the
austere gravity of his character, but also meagre enough to kindle a
fiercer longing for unlimited power. When he actually became possessed
of uncontrolled authority it had lost the charm of novelty. The sweet
intoxication of a young monarch in the sudden and early possession of
supreme power; that joyous tumult of emotions which opens the soul to
every softer sentiment, and to which humanity has owed so many of the
most valuable and the most prized of its institutions; this pleasing
moment had for him long passed by, or had never existed. His character
was already hardened when fortune put him to this severe test, and his
settled principles withstood the collision of occasional emotion. He had
had time, during fifteen years, to prepare himself for the change; and
instead of youthful dallying with the external symbols of his new
station, or of losing the morning of his government in the intoxication
of an idle vanity, he remained composed and serious enough to enter at
once on the full possession of his power so as to revenge himself
through the most extensive employment of it for its having been so long
withheld from him.




THE TRIBUNAL OF THE INQUISITION

Philip II. no sooner saw himself, through the peace of Chateau-Cambray,
in undisturbed enjoyment of his immense territory than he turned his
whole attention to the great work of purifying religion, and verified
the fears of his Netherlandish subjects. The ordinances which his
father had caused to be promulgated against heretics were renewed in all
their rigor, and terrible tribunals, to whom nothing but the name of
inquisition was wanting, were appointed to watch over their execution.
But his plan appeared to him scarcely more than half-fulfilled so long
as he could not transplant into these countries the Spanish Inquisition
in its perfect form--a design in which the Emperor had already suffered
shipwreck.

The Spanish Inquisition is an institution of a new and peculiar kind,
which finds no prototype in the whole course of time, and admits of
comparison with no ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Inquisition had
existed from the time when reason meddled with what is holy, and from
the very commencement of scepticism and innovation; but it was in the
middle of the thirteenth century, after some examples of apostasy had
alarmed the hierarchy, that Innocent III. first erected for it a
peculiar tribunal, and separated, in an unnatural manner, ecclesiastical
superintendence and instruction from its judicial and retributive
office. In order to be the more sure that no human sensibilities or
natural tenderness should thwart the stern severity of its statutes, he
took it out of the hands of the bishops and secular clergy, who, by the
ties of civil life, were still too much attached to humanity for his
purpose, and consigned it to those of the monks, a half-denaturalized
race of beings who had abjured the sacred feelings, of nature, and were
the servile tools of the Roman See. The Inquisition was received in
Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France; a Franciscan monk sat as
judge in the terrible court, which passed sentence on the Templars. A
few states succeeded either in totally excluding or else in subjecting
it to civil authority. The Netherlands had remained free from it until
the government of Charles V. ; their bishops exercised the spiritual
censorship, and in extraordinary cases reference was made to foreign
courts of inquisition; by the French provinces to that of Paris, by the
Germans to that of Cologne.

But the Inquisition which we are here speaking of came from the west of
Europe, and was of a different origin and form. The last Moorish throne
in Granada had fallen in the fifteenth century, and the false faith of
the Saracens had finally succumbed before the fortunes of Christianity.
But the gospel was still new, and but imperfectly established in this
youngest of Christian kingdoms, and in the confused mixture of
heterogeneous laws and manners the religions had become mixed. It is
true the sword of persecution had driven many thousand families to
Africa, but a far larger portion, detained by the love of climate and
home, purchased remission from this dreadful necessity by a show of
conversion, and continued at Christian altars to serve Mohammed and
Moses. So long as prayers were offered towards Mecca, Granada was not
subdued; so long as the new Christian, in the retirement of his house,
became again a Jew or a Moslem, he was as little secured to the throne
as to the Romish See. It was no longer deemed sufficient to compel a
perverse people to adopt the exterior forms of a new faith, or to wed it
to the victorious church by the weak bands of ceremonials; the object
now was to extirpate the roots of an old religion, and to subdue an
obstinate bias which, by the slow operation of centuries, had been
implanted in their manners, their language, and their laws, and by the
enduring influence of a paternal soil and sky was still maintained in
its full extent and vigor.

If the church wished to triumph completely over the opposing worship,
and to secure her new conquest beyond all chance of relapse, it was
indispensable that she should undermine the foundation itself on which
the old religion was built. It was necessary to break to pieces the
entire form of moral character to which it was so closely and intimately
attached. It was requisite to loosen its secret roots from the hold
they had taken in. the innermost depths of the soul; to extinguish all
traces of it, both in domestic life and in the civil world; to cause all
recollection of it to perish; and, if possible, to destroy the very
susceptibility for its impressions. Country and family, conscience and
honor, the sacred feelings of society and of nature, are ever the first
and immediate ties to which religion attaches itself; from these it
derives while it imparts strength. This connection was now to be
dissolved; the old religion was violently to be dissevered from the holy
feelings of nature, even at the expense of the sanctity itself of these
emotions. Thus arose that Inquisition which, to distinguish it from the
more humane tribunals of the same name, we usually call the Spanish.
Its founder was Cardinal Ximenes, a Dominican monk. Torquemada was the
first who ascended its bloody throne, who established its statutes, and
forever cursed his order with this bequest. Sworn to the degradation of
the understanding and the murder of intellect, the instruments it
employed were terror and infamy. Every evil passion was in its pay; its
snare was set in every joy of life. Solitude itself was not safe from
it; the fear of its omnipresence fettered the freedom of the soul in its
inmost and deepest recesses. It prostrated all the instincts of human
nature before it yielded all the ties which otherwise man held most
sacred. A heretic forfeited all claims upon his race; the most trivial
infidelity to his mother church divested him of the rights of his
nature. A modest doubt in the infallibility of the pope met with the
punishment of parricide and the infamy of sodomy; its sentences
resembled the frightful corruption of the plague, which turns the most
healthy body into rapid putrefaction. Even the inanimate things
belonging to a heretic were accursed. No destiny could snatch the
victim of the Inquisition from its sentence. Its decrees were carried
in force on corpses and on pictures, and the grave itself was no asylum
from its tremendous arm. The presumptuous arrogance of its decrees
could only be surpassed by the inhumanity which executed them. By
coupling the ludicrous with the terrible, and by amusing the eye with
the strangeness of its processions, it weakened compassion by the
gratification of another feeling; it drowned sympathy in derision and
contempt. The delinquent was conducted with solemn pomp to the place of
execution, a blood-red flag was displayed before him, the universal
clang of all the bells accompanied the procession. First came the
priests, in the robes of the Mass and singing a sacred hymn; next
followed the condemned sinner, clothed in a yellow vest, covered with
figures of black devils. On his head he wore a paper cap, surmounted by
a human figure, around which played lambent flames of fire, and ghastly
demons flitted. The image of the crucified Saviour was carried before,
but turned away from the eternally condemned sinner, for whom salvation
was no longer available. His mortal body belonged to the material fire,
his immortal soul to the flames of bell. A gag closed his mouth, and
prevented him from alleviating his pain by lamentations, from awakening
compassion by his affecting tale, and from divulging the secrets of the
holy tribunal. He was followed by the clergy in festive robes, by the
magistrates, and the nobility; the fathers who had been his judges
closed the awful procession. It seemed like a solemn funeral
procession, but on looking for the corpse on its way to the grave,
behold! it was a living body whose groans are now to afford such
shuddering entertainment to the people. The executions were generally
held on the high festivals, for which a number of such unfortunate
sufferers were reserved in the prisons of the holy house, in order to
enhance the rejoicing by the multitude of the victims, and on these
occasions the king himself was usually present. He sat with uncovered
head, on a lower chair than that of the Grand Inquisitor, to whom, on
such occasions, he yielded precedence; who, then, would not tremble
before a tribunal at which majesty must humble itself?

The great revolution in the church accomplished by Luther and Calvin
renewed the causes to which this tribunal owed its first origin; and
that which, at its commencement, was invented to clear the petty kingdom
of Granada from the feeble remnant of Saracens and Jews was now required
for the whole of Christendom. All the Inquisitions in Portugal, Italy,
Germany, and France adopted the form of the Spanish; it followed
Europeans to the Indies, and established in Goa a fearful tribunal,
whose inhuman proceedings make us shudder even at the bare recital.
Wherever it planted its foot devastation followed; but in no part of the
world did it rage so violently as in Spain. The victims are forgotten
whom it immolated; the human race renews itself, and the lands, too,
flourish again which it has devastated and depopulated by its fury; but
centuries will elapse before its traces disappear from the Spanish
character. A generous and enlightened nation has been stopped by it on
its road to perfection; it has banished genius from a region where it
was indigenous, and a stillness like that which hangs over the grave has
been left in the mind of a people who, beyond most others of our world,
were framed for happiness and enjoyment.

The first Inquisitor in Brabant was appointed by Charles V. in the year
1522. Some priests were associated with him as coadjutors; but he
himself was a layman. After the death of Adrian VI. , his successor,
Clement VII. , appointed three Inquisitors for all the Netherlands; and
Paul III. again reduced them to two, which number continued until the
commencement of the troubles. In the year 1530, with the aid and
approbation of the states, the edicts against heretics were promulgated,
which formed the foundation of all that followed, and in which, also,
express mention is made of the Inquisition. In the year 1550, in
consequence of the rapid increase of sects, Charles V. was under the
necessity of reviving and enforcing these edicts, and it was on this
occasion that the town of Antwerp opposed the establishment of the
Inquisition, and obtained an exemption from its jurisdiction. But the
spirit of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, in accordance with the
genius of the country, was more humane than in Spain, and as yet had
never been administered by a foreigner, much less by a Dominican. The
edicts which were known to everybody served it as the rule of its
decisions. On this very account it was less obnoxious; because, however
severe its sentence, it did not appear a tool of arbitrary power, and it
did not, like the Spanish Inquisition, veil itself in secrecy.

Philip, however, was desirous of introducing the latter tribunal into
the Netherlands, since it appeared to him the instrument best adapted to
destroy the spirit of this people, and to prepare them for a despotic
government. He began, therefore, by increasing the rigor of the
religious ordinances of his father; by gradually extending the power of
the inquisitors; by making the proceedings more arbitrary, and more
independent of the civil jurisdiction. The tribunal soon wanted little
more than the name and the Dominicans to resemble in every point the
Spanish Inquisition. Bare suspicion was enough to snatch a citizen from
the bosom of public tranquillity, and from his domestic circle; and the
weakest evidence was a sufficient justification for the use of the rack.
Whoever fell into its abyss returned no more to the world. All the
benefits of the laws ceased for him; the maternal care of justice no
longer noticed him; beyond the pale of his former world malice and
stupidity judged him according to laws which were never intended for
man. The delinquent never knew his accuser, and very seldom his crime,
--a flagitious, devilish artifice which constrained the unhappy victim
to guess at his error, and in the delirium of the rack, or in the
weariness of a long living interment, to acknowledge transgressions
which, perhaps, had never been committed, or at least had never come
to the knowledge of his judges. The goods of the condemned were
confiscated, and the informer encouraged by letters of grace and
rewards. No privilege, no civil jurisdiction was valid against the holy
power; the secular arm lost forever all whom that power had once
touched. Its only share in the judicial duties of the latter was to
execute its sentences with humble submissiveness. The consequences of
such an institution were, of necessity, unnatural and horrible; the
whole temporal happiness, the life itself, of an innocent man was at
the mercy of any worthless fellow. Every secret enemy, every envious
person, had now the perilous temptation of an unseen and unfailing
revenge. The security of property, the sincerity of intercourse were
gone; all the ties of interest were dissolved; all of blood and of
affection were irreparably broken. An infectious distrust envenomed
social life; the dreaded presence of a spy terrified the eye from
seeing, and choked the voice in the midst of utterance. No one believed
in the existence of an honest man, or passed for one himself. Good
name, the ties of country, brotherhood, even oaths, and all that man
holds sacred, were fallen in estimation. Such was the destiny to which
a great and flourishing commercial town was subjected, where one hundred
thousand industrious men had been brought together by the single tie of
mutual confidence,--every one indispensable to his neighbor, yet every
one distrusted and distrustful,--all attracted by the spirit of gain,
and repelled from each other by fear,--all the props of society torn
away, where social union was the basis of all life and all existence.




OTHER ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE NETHERLANDS.

No wonder if so unnatural a tribunal, which had proved intolerable even
to the more submissive spirit of the Spaniard, drove a free state to
rebellion. But the terror which it inspired was increased by the
Spanish troops, which, even after the restoration of peace, were kept in
the country, and, in violation of the constitution, garrisoned border
towns. Charles V. had been forgiven for this introduction of foreign
troops so long as the necessity of it was evident, and his good
intentions were less distrusted. But now men saw in these troops only
the alarming preparations of oppression and the instruments of a
detested hierarchy. Moreover, a considerable body of cavalry, composed
of natives, and fully adequate for the protection of the country, made
these foreigners superfluous. The licentiousness and rapacity, too,
of the Spaniards, whose pay was long in arrear, and who indemnified
themselves at the expense of the citizens, completed the exasperation of
the people, and drove the lower orders to despair. Subsequently, when
the general murmur induced the government to move them from the
frontiers and transport them into the islands of Zealand, where ships
were prepared for their deportation, their excesses were carried to such
a pitch that the inhabitants left off working at the embankments, and
preferred to abandon their native country to the fury of the sea rather
than to submit any longer to the wanton brutality of these lawless
bands.

Philip, indeed, would have wished to retain these Spaniards in the
country, in order by their presence to give weight to his edicts,
and to support the innovations which he had resolved to make in the
constitution of the Netherlands. He regarded them as a guarantee for
the submission of the nation and as a chain by which he held it captive.
Accordingly, he left no expedient untried to evade the persevering
importunity of the states, who demanded the withdrawal of these troops;
and for this end he exhausted all the resources of chicanery and
persuasion. At one time he pretended to dread a sudden invasion by
France, although, torn by furious factions, that country could scarce
support itself against a domestic enemy; at another time they were, he
said, to receive his son, Don Carlos, on the frontiers; whom, however,
he never intended should leave Castile. Their maintenance should not be
a burden to the nation; he himself would disburse all their expenses
from his private purse. In order to detain them with the more
appearance of reason he purposely kept back from them their arrears of
pay; for otherwise he would assuredly have preferred them to the troops
of the country, whose demands he fully satisfied. To lull the fears of
the nation, and to appease the general discontent, he offered the chief
command of these troops to the two favorites of the people, the Prince
of Orange and Count Egmont. Both, however, declined his offer, with the
noble-minded declaration that they could never make up their minds to
serve contrary to the laws of the country. The more desire the king
showed to have his Spaniards in the country the more obstinately the
states insisted on their removal. In the following Diet at Ghent he was
compelled, in the very midst of his courtiers, to listen to republican
truth. "Why are foreign hands needed for our defence? " demanded the
Syndic of Ghent. "Is it that the rest of the world should consider us
too stupid, or too cowardly, to protect ourselves?