workingmen of the Low Countries who fled from Spanish tyranny of
conscience. The manufactures of clothes, linen stuffs, etc., which
employed six hundred thousand souls, opened new sources of gain to a
people previously content with the trade in cheese and fish. Fisheries
alone had already enriched them. The herring fishery supported nearly
one fifth of the population of Holland, producing three hundred
thousand tons of salt-fish, and bringing in more than eight million
francs annually.

"The naval and commercial power of the republic developed rapidly. The
merchant fleet of Holland alone numbered 10,000 sail, 168,000 seamen,
and supported 260,000 inhabitants. She had taken possession of the
greater part of the European carrying-trade, and had added thereto,
since the peace, all the carriage of merchandise between America and
Spain, did the same service for the French ports, and maintained an
importation traffic of thirty-six million francs. The north countries,
Brandenburg, Denmark, Sweden, Muscovy, Poland, access to which was
opened by the Baltic to the Provinces, were for them an inexhaustible
market of exchange. They fed it by the produce they sold there, and by
purchase of the products of the North,--wheat, timber, copper, hemp,
and furs. The total value of merchandise yearly shipped in Dutch
bottoms, in all seas, exceeded a thousand million francs. The Dutch
had made themselves, to use a contemporary phrase, the wagoners of all
seas." (1)

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1. Lefevre-Pontalis: Jean de Witt.
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It was through its colonies that the republic had been able thus to