In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany.  Prices could not sustain themselves in the face of depopulation.  Where there was no security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial pursuits had become almost impossible.  The small demand for labour had caused it, as it were, to disappear, altogether.  All men had become beggars, brigands, or soldiers.  A temporary reaction followed.  There were no producers.  Suddenly it was discovered that no corn had been planted, and that there was no harvest.  A famine was the inevitable result.  Prices then rose with most frightful rapidity.  The veertel of rye, which in the previous year had been worth one florin at Brussels and Antwerp, rose in the winter of 1586-7 to twenty, twenty-two, and even twenty-four florins; and wheat advanced from one and one-third florin to thirty-two florins the veertel.  Other articles were proportionally increased in market-value; but it is worthy of remark that mutton was quoted in the midst of the famine at nine stuyvers (a little more than ninepence sterling) the pound, and beef at fivepence, while a single cod-fish sold for twenty-two florins.  Thus wheat was worth sixpence sterling the pound weight (reckoning the veertel of one hundred and twenty pounds at thirty florins), which was a penny more than the price of a pound of beef; while an ordinary fish was equal in value to one hundred and six pounds of beef.  No better evidence could be given that the obedient Provinces were relapsing into barbarism, than that the only agricultural industry then practised was to allow what flocks and herds were remaining to graze at will over the ruined farms and gardens, and that their fishermen were excluded from the sea.

The evil cured itself, however, and, before the expiration of another year, prices were again at their previous level.  The land was sufficiently cultivated to furnish the necessaries of life for a diminishing population, and the supply of labour was more than enough, for the languishing demand.  Wheat was again at tenpence the bushel, and other commodities valued in like proportion, and far below the market-prices in Holland and England.

On the other, hand, the prosperity of the republic was rapidly increasing.  Notwithstanding the war, which had beer raging for a terrible quarter of a century without any interruption, population was increasing, property rapidly advancing in value, labour in active demand.  Famine was impossible to a state which commanded the ocean.  No corn grew in Holland and Zeeland, but their ports were the granary of the world.  The fisheries were a mine of wealth almost equal to the famous Potosi, with which the commercial world was then ringing.  Their commerce with the Baltic nations was enormous.  In one month eight hundred vessels left their havens for the eastern