The Dutch must have known the effects of wealth on a nation, else

—–­ {61} It was debated in council, at Lisbon, whether it would be worth while to keep India, the wealth from the Brazils was so much more easily obtained.  A scruple of conscience, least =sic= the missionaries should be destroyed, turned the scale in favour of retaining the trade of India!! -=-

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they would scarcely have tried to throw off the yoke of Spain, at the very moment when it appeared in its greatest splendour and power. {62}

Insolence and pride, we have too often had occasion to remark, accompany wealth; and Philip was no more proof against its effects, than those potentates who had gone before him.—­There was a great resemblance between the project of invading England, with the invincible armada, as it was called, and the attack on Greece by the King of Persia.  That monarch must have thought very meanly of England, to suppose that the island could be conquered by 30,000 men, even if they could have made good their landing.  Indeed, to try such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour so well at Agincourt and Cressy, and which was not, in any respect, degenerated, manifests his being blinded by the effects of wealth and greatness.

The consequence was, a gradual decline of the affairs of his kingdom; so that, in little less than a century, England placed a king on the throne of Spain.

Though the effect produced on Spain was not so rapid as on Portugal, it was, in some respects, more irretrievable.  The vast numbers of persons who quitted that country, in quest of gold, injured its population, already reduced by the expulsion of the Moors, who were the most industrious of its inhabitants.

The wealth that came to Spain, came in a very unequal distribution, which is a considerable disadvantage, and hastens on that state of things which is the natural forerunner of the decay of a nation.  Wealth, arising by commerce, however great its quantity, must be distributed with some degree of equality; but the great adventurers in the gold mines only shared with their sovereign, and the whole of their wealth came in prodigious quantities, pouring in upon the country. {63}

—–­ {62} Though the Dutch were subject to Spain, yet that had not prevented them from acting in an independent manner in their modes of following trade and commerce.

{63} We see an example of this in our own trade to India.  Captains of ships, merchants, and all those who get money by that trade, come home with moderate fortunes; but the governors, and civil and military officers, who have been settled in the country, come home with princely fortunes, and eclipse the old nobility of the country. -=-

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