Both Spain and Portugal, finding that wealth came with such ease from India and America, neglected industry.  This, indeed, was a very natural consequence; and, when the sources of their riches began to dry up, they found, though too late, that instead of having increased in wealth, they had only been enriching more industrious nations, and ruining themselves.  The gold that arrives from the West passes through the hands of its masters with almost the same rapidity as if they were only agents for the English and the Dutch; so chimerical an idea is that of wealth existing without industry.

The Dutch were the only rivals of the Portuguese in the East Indies; for though other nations came afterwards in for a share, yet the transition from wealth to weakness was already made by the Portuguese, before any of them had begun to set seriously to work, in acquiring possessions, or in carrying on trade with that country.

Portugal thus fell, merely from the rivalship of a more industrious and less advanced nation, after having embraced more territory than she had power to keep.  Spain fell, because she had embraced a wrong object as a source of riches. {64}

The Hans Towns, which owed their prosperity, partly to their own wisdom and perseverance, in the beginning, and partly to the contempt with which sovereigns, in the days of chivalry, viewed commerce, might, with very little penetration, and much less exertion of wisdom than they had displayed, have seen that the spirit of commerce was becoming general, and that moderation and prudence were necessary to preserve them in their proud situation; but the prudence which they possessed at first had given way to pride, and abandoned them; and the first great stroke they received was from Queen Elizabeth.  The ruin of so widely-extended a confederacy could not be astonishing, and, indeed, was a natural consequence of the changes in the manners of the times:  but it was not so with Flanders.  There was nothing to have prevented the Flemish from continuing to enjoy wealth, and follow up industry, except in the rivalship of other nations,

—–­ {64} So short a time did the wealth remain in the country, that, when the famous armada was fitted out against England, a loan of money was solicited, from Genoa, for the purpose. -=-

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particularly of Holland and England; for, though France was farther advanced, as a manufacturing and wealthy nation, than England, yet it was not in the same line of industry with the people of the Netherlands, whose prosperity was not therefore injured by it in the same degree.

As for the Dutch, they continued to increase in wealth till the end of the seventeenth century, and their decline requires a more particular attention.

In addition to their great industry, the fisheries, and art of curing fish, the Dutch excelled in making machines of various sorts, and became the nation that supplied others with materials, in a state ready prepared for manufacturing:  this was a new branch of business, and very lucrative, for, as the machines were kept a secret, the abbreviation of labour was great, and the materials had still the advantage in their sale that a raw material has over manufactured goods; so that the advantages were almost beyond example.