people been toward trade, the action of government would have been
drawn into the same current. The great field of the colonies, also,
was remote from the centre of that despotism which blighted the growth
of old Spain. As it was, thousands of Spaniards, of the working as
well as the upper classes, left Spain; and the occupations in which
they engaged abroad sent home little but specie, or merchandise of
small bulk, requiring but small tonnage. The mother-country herself
produced little but wool, fruit, and iron; her manufactures were
naught; her industries suffered; her population steadily decreased.
Both she and her colonies depended upon the Dutch for so many of the
necessaries of life, that the products of their scanty industries
could not suffice to pay for them. "So that Holland merchants," writes
a contemporary, "who carry money to most parts of the world to buy
commodities, must out of this single country of Europe carry home
money, which they receive in payment of their goods." Thus their
eagerly sought emblem of wealth passed quickly from their hands. It
has already been pointed out how weak, from a military point of view,
Spain was from this decay of her shipping. Her wealth being in small
bulk on a few ships, following more or less regular routes, was easily
seized by an enemy, and the sinews of war paralyzed; whereas the
wealth of England and Holland, scattered over thousands of ships in
all parts of the world, received many bitter blows in many exhausting
wars, without checking a growth which, though painful, was steady. The
fortunes of Portugal, united to Spain during a most critical period of
her history, followed the same downward path: although foremost in the
beginning of the race for development by sea, she fell utterly behind.
"The mines of Brazil were the ruin of Portugal, as those of Mexico and
Peru had been of Spain; all manufactures fell into insane contempt;
ere long the English supplied the Portuguese not only with clothes,
but with all merchandise, all commodities, even to salt-fish and