NEW CANALS
The solicitude of the central Government was not limited to industry. Roads and canals were repaired all over the country and new important public works were undertaken. Though the project of a Rhine-Scheldt Canal, favoured by Isabella, had to be given up owing to Dutch opposition, the canals from Bruges to Ghent (1614), from Bruges to Ostend (1624-66) and from Bruges to Ypres (1635-39) were completed at this time. Navigation on the Dendre was also improved, and it was in 1656 that the project was made to connect Brussels with the province of Hainault by a waterway. This plan was only realized a century later.
The conditions prevailing in the Catholic Low Countries during the first part of the seventeenth century were, therefore, on the whole, favourable. With regard to world trade and foreign politics the country was entirely paralysed, but the activity of the people and the solicitude of the sovereigns succeeded in realizing the economic restoration of the country as far as this restoration depended upon them. The real economic decadence of Belgium did not occur on the date of the separation, but fifty years later, during the second half of the seventeenth century, when its exports were reduced by the protective tariffs of France, when the Thirty Years' War ruined the German market and when Spain remained the only country open for its produce.
SOCIAL LIFE
This relative prosperity extended beyond the twelve years of the truce. For, even when hostilities were resumed, they did not deeply affect the life of the nation, most of the operations being limited to the frontier. Some Belgian historians have drawn a very flattering picture of this period and extolled the personal qualities of Albert and Isabella. We must, however, realize that, in spite of the archduke's good intentions, the promises made at the peace of Arras were not kept, that the States General were only twice assembled and that all the political guarantees obtained by the patriots from Farnese were disregarded. Spanish garrisons remained in the country and the representatives of the people had no control over the expenditure. In fact, Belgium was nearer to having an absolutist monarchical régime than it had ever been before. The Council of State was only assembled to conciliate the nobility, whose loyalty was still further encouraged by the granting of honours, such as that of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and entrusting to them missions to foreign countries. The upper bourgeoisie, on the other hand, were largely permitted to enter the ranks of the nobility by receiving titles. From 1602 to 1638 no less than forty-one estates were raised to the rank of counties, marquisates and principalities, and a contemporary writer complains that "as many nobles are made now in one year as formerly in a hundred." It was among these new nobles, or would-be nobles, who constituted a class very similar to that of the English gentry of the same period, that the State recruited the officers of its army and many officials, whose loyalty was, of course, ensured.
No opposition was likely from the ranks of the clergy. The new bishoprics founded by Philip II had been reconstituted and the bishops selected by the king exercised strict discipline in their dioceses. Besides, all religious orders were now united by the necessity of opposing a common front to the attacks of the Protestants, and they felt that the fate of the religion was intimately bound up with that of the dynasty. The principle of the Divine right of Kings was opposed to the doctrine of the right of the people to choose their monarch propounded by the Monarchomaques, and Roman Catholics were, by then, attached to the monarchy just as Calvinists were attached to the Republic. The experiences of the last century prevented any return to the situation existing under Charles V, when, on certain questions, the clergy were inclined to side with the people against the prince. The close alliance of Church and State had now become an accomplished fact, and was destined to influence Belgian politics right up to modern times. The loyalty of the people was even stimulated by this alliance, the work of public charity being more and more taken from the communal authorities to be monopolized by the clergy. Attendance at church and, for children, at catechism and Sunday school was encouraged by benevolence, the distribution of prizes and small favours, while religious slackness or any revolutionary tendency implied a loss of all similar advantages. Here, again, the skilful propaganda against heresy constituted a powerful weapon in the hands of the State. It must, in all fairness, be added that charity contributed greatly to relieve the misery so widespread during the first years of the century, and that the people were genuinely grateful to such orders as the Récollets and the Capuchins, who resumed the work undertaken with such enthusiasm by the Minor Orders in the previous centuries. They visited the prisoners and the sick, sheltered the insane and the destitute, and even undertook such public duties as those of firemen. These efforts soon succeeded in obliterating the last traces of Calvinist and republican tendencies, which had never succeeded in affecting the bulk of the population.
As a modern sovereign, bent on increasing the power of the State, Archduke Albert resented the encroachments of the clergy, as Charles V had done before him. But he was as powerless to extricate himself from the circumstances which identified the interests of his internal policy with those of the Church, as to liberate himself from the severe restrictions with which the Spanish régime paralysed his initiative in foreign matters.