hope to escape the gripe of the new tax-gatherers.  Yet the Governor was not the man to be daunted by the probable unpopularity of the measure.  Courage he possessed in more than mortal proportion.  He seemed to have set himself to the task of ascertaining the exact capacity of the country for wretchedness.  He was resolved accurately to gauge its width and its depth; to know how much of physical and moral misery might be accumulated within its limits, before it should be full to overflowing.  Every man, woman, and child in the country had been solemnly condemned to death; and arbitrary executions, in pursuance of that sentence, had been daily taking place.  Millions of property had been confiscated; while the most fortunate and industrious, as well as the bravest of the Netherlanders, were wandering penniless in distant lands.  Still the blows, however recklessly distributed, had not struck every head.  The inhabitants had been decimated, not annihilated, and the productive energy of the country, which for centuries had possessed so much vitality, was even yet not totally extinct.  In the wreck of their social happiness, in the utter overthrow of their political freedom, they had still preserved the shadow, at least, of one great bulwark against despotism.  The king could impose no tax.

The “Joyeuse Entree” of Brabant, as well as the constitutions of Flanders, Holland, Utrecht, and all the other provinces, expressly prescribed the manner in which the requisite funds for government should be raised.  The sovereign or his stadholder was to appear before the estates in person, and make his request for money.  It was for the estates, after consultation with their constituents, to decide whether or not this petition (Bede) should be granted, and should a single branch decline compliance, the monarch was to wait with patience for a more favorable moment.  Such had been the regular practice in the Netherlands, nor had the reigning houses often had occasion to accuse the estates of parsimony.  It was, however, not wonderful that the Duke of Alva should be impatient at the continued existence of this provincial privilege.  A country of condemned criminals, a nation whose universal neck might at any moment be laid upon the block without ceremony, seemed hardly fit to hold the purse-strings, and to dispense alms to its monarch.  The Viceroy was impatient at this arrogant vestige of constitutional liberty.  Moreover, although he had taken from the Netherlanders nearly all the attributes of freemen, he was unwilling that they should enjoy the principal privilege of slaves, that of being fed and guarded at their master’s expense.  He had therefore summoned a general assembly of the provincial estates in Brussels, and on the 20th of March, 1569, had caused the following decrees to be laid before them.

A tax of the hundredth penny, or one per cent., was laid upon all property, real and personal, to be collected instantly.  This impost, however, was not perpetual, but only to be paid once, unless, of course, it should suit the same arbitrary power by which it was assessed to require it a second time.