re interest than had their follow-subjects in the
Moluccas or in Mexico, but which constituted for them personally as
lucrative a trade on the whole as was afforded them at that day by any
branch of industry.

Silk, corn, wine, and oil were furnished in profusion from these favoured
regions, not that the inhabitants might enjoy life, and, by accumulating
wealth, increase the stock of human comforts and contribute to
intellectual and scientific advancement, but in order that the proprietor
of the soil might feed those eternal armies ever swarming from the south
to scatter desolation over the plains of France, Burgundy, Flanders, and
Holland, and to make the crown of Spain and the office of the Holy
Inquisition supreme over the world. From Naples and Sicily were derived
in great plenty the best materials and conveniences for ship-building and
marine equipment. The galleys and the galley-slaves furnished by these
subject realms formed the principal part of the royal navy. From distant
regions, a commerce which in Philip's days had become oceanic supplied
the crown with as much revenue as could be expected in a period of gross
ignorance as to the causes of the true grandeur and the true wealth of
nations. Especially from the mines of Mexico came an annual average of
ten or twelve millions of precious metals, of which the king took
twenty-five per cent. for himself.

It would be difficult and almost superfluous to indicate the various
resources placed in the hands of this one personage, who thus controlled
so large a portion of the earth. All that breathed or grew belonged to
him, and most steadily was the stream of blood and treasure poured
through the sieve of his perpetual war. His system was essentially a
gigantic and perpetual levy of contributions in kind, and it is only in
this vague and unsatisfactory manner that the revenues of his empire can
be stated. A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so, for he
is responsible to no man for the way in which he husbands or squanders
his own. Moreover, the science of statistics had not a beginning of
existence in those days, and the most common facts can hardly be
obtained, even by approximation. The usual standard of value, the
commodity which we call money--gold or silver--is well known to be at
best a fallacious guide for estimating the comparative wealth--of
individuals or of nations at widely different epochs. The dollar of
Philip's day was essentially the same