according to royal caprice. Monarchs might give the revenue of a
suppressed convent to a cook, as reward for a successful pudding; the
surface of Britain and the continent might be covered with abbeys and
monasteries now converted into lordly palaces--passing thus from the dead
hand of the Church into the idle and unproductive palm of the noble; but
the ancient ecclesiastical establishments of the free Netherlands were
changed into eleemosynary institutions, admirably organized and
administered with wisdom and economy, where orphans of the poor, widows
of those slain in the battles for freedom by land and sea, and the aged
and the infirm, who had deserved well of the republic in the days of
their strength, were educated or cherished at the expense of the public,
thus endowed from the spoils of the Church.

In Spain, monasteries upon monasteries were rising day by day, as if
there were not yet receptacles enough for monks and priests, while
thousands upon thousands of Spaniards were pressing into the ranks of
the priesthood, and almost forcing themselves into monasteries, that
they might be privileged to beg, because ashamed to work. In the
United Netherlands the confiscated convents, with their revenues,
were appropriated for the good of those who were too young or too old to
labour, and too poor to maintain themselves without work. Need men look
further than to this simple fact to learn why Spain was decaying while
the republic was rising?

The ordinary budget of the United Provinces was about equal to that of
England, varying not much from four millions of florins, or four hundred
thousand pounds. But the extraordinary revenue was comparatively without
limits, and there had been years, during the war, when the citizens had
taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent. on each individual income,
and doubled the receipts of the exchequer. The budget was proposed once