The King could not derive wealth from the ruin of his subjects; yet to establish such a system was the stern and absurd determination of the Governor-general.  The infantine simplicity of the effort seemed incredible.  The ignorance was as sublime as the tyranny.  The most lucid arguments and the most earnest remonstrances were all in vain.  Too opaque to be illumined by a flood of light, too hard to be melted by a nation’s tears, the Viceroy held calmly to his purpose.  To the keen and vivid representations of Viglius, who repeatedly exhibited all that was oppressive and all that was impossible in the tax, he answered simply that it was nothing more nor less than the Spanish “alcabala,” and that he derived 50,000 ducats yearly from its imposition in his own city of Alva.

Viglius was upon this occasion in opposition to the Duke.  It is but justice to state that the learned jurisconsult manfully and repeatedly confronted the wrath of his superior in many a furious discussion in council upon the subject.  He had never essayed to snatch one brand from the burning out of the vast holocaust of religious persecution, but he was roused at last by the threatened destruction of all the material interests of the land.  He confronted the tyrant with courage, sustained perhaps by the knowledge that the proposed plan was not the King’s, but the Governor’s.  He knew that it was openly ridiculed in Madrid, and that Philip, although he would probably never denounce it in terms, was certainly not eager for its execution.  The President enlarged upon the difference which existed between the condition of a sparsely-peopled country of herdsmen and laborers in Spain, and the densely-thronged and bustling cities of the Netherlands.  If the Duke collected 50,000 ducats yearly from the alcabala in Alva, he could only offer him his congratulations, but could not help assuring him that the tax would prove an impossibility in the provinces.  To his argument, that the impost would fall with severity not upon the highest nor the lowest classes of society, neither upon the great nobility and clergy nor on the rustic population, but on the merchants and manufacturers, it was answered by the President that it was not desirable to rob Saint Peter’s altar in order to build one to Saint Paul.  It might have been simpler to suggest that the consumer would pay the tax, supposing it were ever paid at all, but the axiom was not so familiar three centuries ago as now.

Meantime, the report of the deputies to the assembly on their return to their constituents had created the most intense excitement and alarm.  Petition after petition, report after report, poured in upon the government.  There was a cry of despair, and almost of defiance, which had not been elicited by former agonies.  To induce, however, a more favorable disposition on the part of the Duke, the hundredth penny, once for all, was conceded by the estates.  The tenth and twentieth occasioned—­severe