ples and filling a
political need, was the source of real strength, the subsequent
accretions of Italian and Burgundian territories rather detracted from
than added to the effective power of the Spanish state. Philip would
have been far stronger had his father separated from his crown not only
Austria and the Holy Roman Empire of Germany, but the Netherlands as
well. The revolt of the Dutch Republic was in itself almost enough to
ruin Spain. Nor can it be said that the Italian states, won by the
sword of Ferdinand or of Charles, were valuable accessions to Spanish
power.

[Sidenote: Colonies]

Quite different in its nature was the colonial empire, but in this it
resembled the other windfalls to the house of Hapsburg in that it was
an almost accidental, unsought-for acquisition. The Genoese sailor who
went to the various courts of Europe begging for a few ships in which
to break the watery path to Asia, had in his beggar's wallet all the
kingdoms of a new world and the glory of them. For a few years Spain
drank until she was drunken of conquest and the gold of America. That
the draught acted momentarily as a stimulant, clearing her brain and
nerving her arm to deeds of valor, but that she suffered in the end
from the riotous debauch, cannot be doubted. She soon learned that all
that glittered was not wealth, and that industries surfeited with metal
and starved of raw materials must perish. The unearned coin proved to
be fairy gold in her coffers, turning to brown leaves and dust when she
wanted to use it. It became a drug in her markets; it could not
lawfully be exported, and no {431} amount of it would purchase much
honest labor from an indolent population fed on fantasies of wealth.
The modern King Midas, on whose dominions the sun never set, was cursed
with a singular and to him inexplicable need of everything that money
was supposed to buy. His armies mutinied, his ships rotted, and never
could his increasing income catch up with the far more rapidly
increasing expenses of his budget.

The poverty of the people was in large part the fault of the government
which pursued a fiscal policy ideally calculated to strike at the very
sources of wealth. While, under the oppression of an ignorant
paternalism, unhappy Spain suffered from inanition, she was tended by a
physician who tried to cure her malady by phlebotomy. There have been
worse men than Philip II, [Sidenote: Philip II, 1556-98] but there have
been