ition. These had, as a matter of course, been confiscated as the
strife went on. The buildings, farms, and funds, once the property of the
Church, had not, however, been seized upon, as in other Protestant lands,
by rapacious monarchs, and distributed among great nobles according to
royal caprice. Monarchs might give the revenue of a suppressed convent to
a cook, as reward for a successful pudding; the surface of Britain and
the continent might be covered with abbeys and monasteries now converted
into lordly palaces--passing thus from the dead hand of the Church into
the idle and unproductive palm of the noble; but the ancient
ecclesiastical establishments of the free Netherlands were changed into
eleemosynary institutions, admirably organized and administered with
wisdom and economy, where orphans of the poor, widows of those slain in
the battles for freedom by land and sea, and the aged and the infirm, who
had deserved well of the republic in the days of their strength, were
educated or cherished at the expense of the public, thus endowed from the
spoils of the Church.

In Spain, monasteries upon monasteries were rising day by day, as if
there were not yet receptacles enough for monks and priests, while
thousands upon thousands of Spaniards were pressing into the ranks of the
priesthood, and almost forcing themselves into monasteries, that they
might be privileged to beg, because ashamed to work. In the United
Netherlands the confiscated convents, with their revenues, were
appropriated for the good of those who were too young or too old to
labour, and too poor to maintain themselves without work. Need men look
further than to this simple fact to learn why Spain was decaying while
the republic was rising?

The ordinary budget of the United Provinces was about equal to that of
England, varying not much from four millions of florins, or four hundred
thousand pounds. But the extraordinary revenue was comparatively without
limits, and there had been years, during the war, when the citizens had
taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent. on each individual income,
and doubled the receipts of the exchequer. The budget was proposed once a
year, by the council of state, and voted by the States-General, who
assigned the quota of each province; that of Holland being always
one-half of the whole, that of Zeeland sixteen per cent., and that of the
other five of course in lesser proportions. The revenue was collected in
the sepa