Animated by the ardor which springs from the spirit of freedom and the enthusiasm of success, the United Provinces labored for the discovery of new outlets for their commerce and navigation. The government encouraged the speculations of individuals, which promised fresh and fertile sources of revenue, so necessary for the maintenance of the war. Until the year 1581 the merchants of Holland and Zealand were satisfied to find the productions of India at Lisbon, which was the mart of that branch of trade ever since the Portuguese discovered the passage by the Cape of Good Hope. But Philip II., having conquered Portugal, excluded the United Provinces from the ports of that country; and their enterprising mariners were from that period driven to those efforts which rapidly led to private fortune and general prosperity. The English had opened the way in this career; and the states-general having offered a large reward for the discovery of a northwest passage, frequent and most adventurous voyages took place. Houtman, Le Maire, Heemskirk, Ryp, and others, became celebrated for their enterprise, and some for their perilous and interesting adventures.
The United Provinces were soon without any rival on the seas. In Europe alone they had one thousand two hundred merchant ships in activity, and upward of seventy thousand sailors constantly employed. They built annually two thousand vessels. In the year 1598, eighty ships sailed from their ports for the Indies or America. They carried on, besides, an extensive trade on the coast of Guinea, whence they brought large quantities of gold-dust; and found, in short, in all quarters of the globe the reward of their skill, industry, and courage.
The spirit of conquest soon became grafted on the habits of trade. Expedition succeeded to expedition. Failure taught wisdom to those who did not want bravery. The random efforts of individuals were succeeded by organized plans, under associations well constituted and wealthy; and these soon gave birth to those eastern and western companies before alluded to. The disputes between the English and the Hanseatic towns were carefully observed by the Dutch, and turned to their own advantage. The English manufacturers, who quickly began to flourish, from the influx of Flemish workmen under the encouragement of Elizabeth, formed companies in the Netherlands, and sent their cloths into those very towns of Germany which formerly possessed the exclusive privilege of their manufacture. These towns naturally felt dissatisfied, and their complaints were encouraged by the king of Spain. The English adventurers received orders to quit the empire; and, invited by the states-general, many of them fixed their residence in Middleburg, which became the most celebrated woollen market in Europe.
The establishment of the Jews in the towns of the republic forms a remarkable epoch in the annals of trade. This people, so outraged by the loathsome bigotry which Christians have not blushed to call religion, so far from being depressed by the general persecution, seemed to find it a fresh stimulus to the exertion of their industry. To escape death in Spain and Portugal they took refuge in Holland, where toleration encouraged and just principles of state maintained them. They were at first taken for Catholics, and subjected to suspicion; but when their real faith was understood they were no longer molested.
Astronomy and geography, two sciences so closely allied with and so essential to navigation, flourished now throughout Europe. Ortilius of Antwerp, and Gerard Mercator of Rupelmonde, were two of the greatest geographers of the sixteenth century; and the reform in the calendar at the end of that period gave stability to the calculations of time, which had previously suffered all the inconvenient fluctuations attendant on the old style.
Literature had assumed during the revolution in the Netherlands the almost exclusive and repulsive aspect of controversial learning. The university of Douay, installed in 1562 as a new screen against the piercing light of reform, quickly became the stronghold of intolerance. That of Leyden, established by the efforts of the Prince of Orange, soon after the famous siege of that town in 1574, was on a less exclusive plan—its professors being in the first instance drawn from Germany. Many Flemish historians succeeded in this century to the ancient and uncultivated chroniclers of preceding times; the civil wars drawing forth many writers, who recorded what they witnessed, but often in a spirit of partisanship and want of candor, which seriously embarrasses him who desires to learn the truth on both sides of an important question. Poetry declined and drooped in the times of tumult and suffering; and the chambers of rhetoric, to which its cultivation had been chiefly due, gradually lost their influence, and finally ceased to exist.
In fixing our attention on the republic of the United Provinces during the epoch now completed, we feel the desire, and lament the impossibility, of entering on the details of government in that most remarkable state. For these we must refer to what appears to us the best authority for clear and ample information on the prerogative of the stadtholder, the constitution of the states-general, the privileges of the tribunals and local assemblies, and other points of moment concerning the principles of the Belgic confederation.[4]
[Footnote 4: See Cerisier, Hist. Gen. des Prov. Unies.]