against a foreign tyranny. They had need to repose and recruit, but they
stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not easy in
imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth into
the contracted spheres of their not remote past. But to feel how a
little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-
defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place
in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that
there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of
America, scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense which belongs to that
mighty empire now.

France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading powers
with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great problems
and try conclusions; the study of political international equilibrium,
now rapidly and perhaps fortunately becoming one of the lost arts, being
then the most indispensable duty of kings and statesmen.

Spain and France, which had long since achieved for themselves the
political union of many independent kingdoms and states into which they
had been divided were the most considerable powers and of necessity
rivals. Spain, or rather the House of Austria divided into its two great
branches, still pursued its persistent and by no means fantastic dream of
universal monarchy. Both Spain and France could dispose of somewhat
larger resources absolutely, although not relatively, than the Seven
Provinces, while at least trebling them in population. The yearly
revenue of Spain after deduction of its pledged resources was perhaps
equal to a million sterling, and that of France with the same reservation
was about as much. England had hardly been able to levy and make up a
yearly income of more than L600,000 or L700,000 at the end of Elizabeth's
reign or in the first years of James, while the Netherlands had often