complishment.

But why did not Philip II. himself appear in the Netherlands? Why did
he prefer to employ every other means, however improbable, rather than
make trial of the only remedy which could insure success? To curb the
overgrown power and insolence of the nobility there was no expedient
more natural than the presence of their master. Before royalty itself
all secondary dignities must necessarily have sunk in the shade, all
other splendor be dimmed. Instead of the truth being left to flow
slowly and obscurely through impure channels to the distant throne, so
that procrastinated measures of redress gave time to ripen ebullitions
of the moment into acts of deliberation, his own penetrating glance
would at once have been able to separate truth from error; and cold
policy alone, not to speak of his humanity, would have saved the land a
million citizens. The nearer to their source the more weighty would his
edicts have been; the thicker they fell on their objects the weaker and
the more dispirited would have become the efforts of the rebels. It
costs infinitely more to do an evil to an enemy in his presence than in
his absence. At first the rebellion appeared to tremble at its own
name, and long sheltered itself under the ingenious pretext of defending
the cause of its sovereign against the arbitrary assumptions of his own
viceroy. Philip's appearance in Brussels would have put an end at once
to this juggling. In that case, the rebels would have been compelled to
act up to their pretence, or to cast aside the mask, and so, by
appearing in their true shape, condemn themselves. And what a relief
for the Netherlands if the king's presence had only spared them those
evils which were inflicted upon them without his knowledge, and contrary
to his will. [1] What gain, too, even if it had only enabled him to
watch over the expenditure of the vast sums which, illegally raised on
the plea of meeting the exigencies of the war, disappeared in the
plundering hands of his deputies.

What the latter were compelled to extort by the unnatural expedient of
terror, the nation would have been disposed to grant to the sovereign
majesty. That which made his ministers detested would have rendered the
monarch feared; for the abuse of hereditary power is less painfully
oppressive than the abuse of delegated authority. His presence would
have saved his exchequer thousands had he been nothing more than an
economical despot; and even had he been