e influence of a corrupt government, must naturally lead
to the liberty and the happiness of a people.

The weaving of woollen and linen cloths was one of the chief
sources of this growing prosperity. A prodigious quantity of
cloth and linen was manufactured in all parts of the Netherlands.
The maritime prosperity acquired an equal increase by the carrying
trade, both in imports and exports. Whole fleets of Dutch and
Flemish merchant ships repaired regularly to the coasts of Spain
and Languedoc. Flanders was already become the great market for
England and all the north of Europe. The great increase of population
forced all parts of the country into cultivation; so much so,
that lands were in those times sold at a high price, which are
to-day left waste from imputed sterility.

Legislation naturally followed the movements of those positive
and material interests. The earliest of the towns, after the
invasion of the Normans, were in some degree but places of refuge.
It was soon however, established that the regular inhabitants
of these bulwarks of the country should not be subjected to any
servitude beyond their care and defence; but the citizen who
might absent himself for a longer period than forty days was
considered a deserter and deprived of his rights. It was about
the year 1100 that the commons began to possess the privilege of
regulating their internal affairs; they appointed their judges
and magistrates, and attached to their authority the old custom of
ordering all the citizens to assemble or march when the summons
of the feudal lord sounded the signal for their assemblage or
service. By this means each municipal magistracy had the disposal
of a force far superior to those of the nobles, for the population
of the towns exceeded both in number and discipline the vassals of
the seigniorial lands. And these trained bands of the towns made
war in a way very different from that hitherto practiced; for the
chivalry of the country, making the trade of arms a profession for
life, the feuds of the chieftains produced hereditary struggles,
almost always slow, and mutually disastrous. But the townsmen,
forced to tear themselves from every association of home and
its manifold endearments, advanced boldly to the object of the
contest; never shrinking from the dangers of war, from fear of
that still greater to be found in a prolonged struggle. It is this
that it may be remarked, during the memorable conflicts of the
thirt