an interest in their judicious administration. Yet it maybe supposed to
have been a matter of indifference to them whether Francis or Charles had
won the day at Pavia, and it certainly was not a cause of triumph to the
daily increasing thousands of religious reformers in Holland and Flanders
that their brethren had been crushed by the Emperor at Muhlberg. But it
was not alone that he drained their treasure, and hampered their
industry. He was in constant conflict with their ancient and dearly-
bought political liberties. Like his ancestor Charles the Bold, he was
desirous of constructing a kingdom out of the provinces. He was disposed
to place all their separate and individual charters on a procrustean bed,
and shape them all into uniformity simply by reducing the whole to a
nullity. The difficulties in the way, the stout opposition offered by
burghers, whose fathers had gained these charters with their blood, and
his want of leisure during the vast labors which devolved upon him as the
autocrat of so large a portion of the world, caused him to defer
indefinitely the execution of his plan. He found time only to crush some
of the foremost of the liberal institutions of the provinces, in detail.
He found the city of Tournay a happy, thriving, self-governed little
republic in all its local affairs; he destroyed its liberties, without a
tolerable pretext, and reduced it to the condition of a Spanish or
Italian provincial town.

His memorable chastisement of Ghent for having dared to assert its
ancient rights of self-taxation, is sufficiently known to the world, and
has been already narrated at length. Many other instances might be
adduced, if it were not a superfluous task, to prove that Charles was not
only a political despot, but most arbitrary and cruel in the exercise of
his despotism.

But if his sins against the Netherlands had been only those of financial