The pictures painted of the republic by shrewd and caustic observers, not
inclined by nature or craft to portray freedom in too engaging colours,
seem, when contrasted with those revealed of Spain, almost like
enthusiastic fantasies of an ideal commonwealth.

During the last twenty years of the great war the material prosperity of
the Netherlands had wonderfully increased. They had, become the first
commercial nation in the world. They had acquired the supremacy of the
seas. The population of Amsterdam had in twenty years increased from
seventy thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand, and was destined to be
again more than doubled in the coming decade. The population of Antwerp
had sunk almost as rapidly as that of its rival had increased; having
lessened by fifty thousand during the same period. The commercial
capital of the obedient provinces, having already lost much of its famous
traffic by the great changes in the commercial current of the world, was
unable to compete with the cities of the United Provinces in the vast
trade which the geographical discoveries of the preceding century had
opened to civilization. Freedom of thought and action were denied, and
without such liberty it was impossible for oceanic commerce to thrive.
Moreover, the possession by the Hollanders of the Scheld forts below
Antwerp, and of Flushing at the river's mouth, suffocated the ancient
city, and would of itself have been sufficient to paralyze all its
efforts.

In Antwerp the exchange, where once thousands of the great merchants of
the earth held their daily financial parliament, now echoed to the
solitary footfall of the passing stranger. Ships lay rotting at the
quays; brambles grow in the commercial streets. In Amsterdam the city
had been enlarged by two-thirds, and those who swarmed thither to seek