h over the warring
sects of Calvinists, there were other engineers on whom the Spanish
government relied to effect the reconquest of the Netherlands. Especially
it was an object to wreak vengeance on Holland, that head and front of
the revolt, both for its persistence in rebellion and for the immense
prosperity and progress by which that rebellion had been rewarded.
Holland had grown fat and strong, while the obedient Netherlands were
withered to the marrow of their bones. But there was a practical person
then resident in Spain to whom the Netherlands were well known, to whom
indeed everything was well known, who had laid before the King a
magnificent scheme for destroying the commerce and with it the very
existence of Holland to the great advantage of the Spanish finances and
of the Spanish Netherlands. Philip of course laid it before the Archduke
as usual, that he might ponder it well and afterwards, if approved,
direct its execution.

The practical person set forth in an elaborate memoir that the Hollanders
were making rapid progress in commerce, arts, and manufactures, while the
obedient provinces were sinking as swiftly into decay. The Spanish
Netherlands were almost entirely shut off from the sea, the rivers
Scheldt and Meuse being hardly navigable for them on account of the
control of those waters by Holland. The Dutch were attracting to their
dominions all artisans, navigators, and traders. Despising all other
nations and giving them the law, they had ruined the obedient provinces.
Ostend, Nieuwpoort, Dunkerk were wasting away, and ought to be restored.

"I have profoundly studied forty years long the subjects of commerce and
navigation," said the practical person, "and I have succeeded in
penetrating the secrets and acquiring, as it were, universal
knowledge--let me not be suspected of boasting--of the whole discovered
world and of the ocean. I have been assisted by study of the best works
of geography and history, by my own labours, and by those of my late
father, a man of illustrious genius and heroical conceptions and very
zealous in the Catholic faith."

The modest and practical son of an illustrious but anonymous father, then
coming to the point, said it would be the easiest thing in the world to
direct the course of the Scheldt into an entirely new channel through
Spanish Flanders to the sea. Thus the Dutch ports and forts which had
been constructed with such magnificence and at such vast expense would