measures, as they supposed, that the arts of refining sugar, irrigating
the rice-fields, constructing canals and aqueducts, besides many other
useful branches of agricultural and mechanical business, should not die
out with the intellectual, accomplished, and industrious race, alone
competent to practise them, which was now sent forth to die. A very
small number, not more than six in each hundred, were accordingly
reserved to instruct other inhabitants of Spain in those useful arts
which they were now more than ever encouraged to despise.

Five hundred thousand full-grown human beings, as energetic, ingenious,
accomplished, as any then existing in the world, were thus thrust forth
into the deserts beyond sea, as if Spain had been overstocked with
skilled labour; and as if its native production had already outgrown the
world's power of consumption.

Had an equal number of mendicant monks, with the two archbishops who had
contrived this deed at their head, been exported instead of the Moors,
the future of Spain might have been a more fortunate one than it was
likely to prove. The event was in itself perhaps of temporary advantage
to the Dutch republic, as the poverty and general misery, aggravated by
this disastrous policy, rendered the acknowledgment of the States'
independence by Spain almost a matter of necessity.

It is superfluous to enter into any farther disquisiton as to the various
branches of the royal revenue. They remained essentially the same as
during the preceding reign, and have been elaborately set forth in a
previous chapter. The gradual drying up of resources in all the wide-
spread and heterogeneous territories subject to the Spanish sceptre is
the striking phenomenon of the present epoch. The distribution of such
wealth as was still created followed the same laws which had long