As a matter of course, he was a firm opponent of the national rights of the Netherlands, however artfully he disguised the sharp sword of violent absolutism under a garland of flourishing phraseology.  He had strenuously warned Philip against assembling the States-general before his departure for the sake of asking them for supplies.  He earnestly deprecated allowing the constitutional authorities any control over the expenditures of the government, and averred that this practice under the Regent Mary had been the cause of endless trouble.  It may easily be supposed that other rights were as little to his taste as the claim to vote the subsidies, a privilege which was in reality indisputable.  Men who stood forth in defence of the provincial constitutions were, in his opinion, mere demagogues and hypocrites; their only motive being to curry favor with the populace.  Yet these charters were, after all, sufficiently limited.  The natural rights of man were topics which had never been broached.  Man had only natural wrongs.  None ventured to doubt that sovereignty was heaven-born, anointed of God.  The rights of the Netherlands were special, not general; plural, not singular; liberties, not liberty; “privileges,” not maxims.  They were practical, not theoretical; historical, not philosophical.  Still, such as they were, they were facts, acquisitions.  They had been purchased by the blood and toil of brave ancestors; they amounted—­however open to criticism upon broad humanitarian grounds, of which few at that day had ever dreamed—­to a solid, substantial dyke against the arbitrary power which was ever chafing and fretting to destroy its barriers.  No men were more subtle or more diligent in corroding the foundation of these bulwarks than the disciples of Granvelle.  Yet one would have thought it possible to tolerate an amount of practical freedom so different from the wild, social speculations which in later days, have made both tyrants and reasonable lovers of our race tremble with apprehension.  The Netherlanders claimed, mainly, the right to vote the money which was demanded in such enormous profusion from their painfully-acquired wealth; they were also unwilling to be burned alive if they objected to transubstantiation.  Granvelle was most distinctly of an opposite opinion upon both topics.  He strenuously deprecated the interference of the states with the subsidies, and it was by his advice that the remorseless edict of 1550, the Emperor’s ordinance of blood and fire, was re-enacted, as the very first measure of Philip’s reign.  Such were his sentiments as to national and popular rights by representation.  For the people itself —­“that vile and mischievous animal called the people”—­as he expressed it, he entertained a cheerful contempt.

His aptitude for managing men was very great; his capacity for affairs incontestable; but it must be always understood as the capacity for the affairs of absolutism.  He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit manager; it remained to be seen whether he had a claim to the character of a statesman.  His industry was enormous.  He could write fifty letters a day with his own hand.  He could dictate to half a dozen amanuenses at once, on as many different subjects, in as many different languages, and send them all away exhausted.