inhuman, as they often bore hardest precisely upon the very persons who
were the most peaceful subjects, and most orthodox Roman Catholics, whom
they could not want to injure. Whenever an estate was confiscated all
the creditors who had claims upon it were defrauded. The hospitals,
too, and public institutions, which such properties had contributed to
support, were now ruined, and the poor, who had formerly drawn a
pittance from this source, were compelled to see their only spring of
comfort dried up. Whoever ventured to urge their well-grounded claims
on the forfeited property before the council of twelve (for no other
tribunal dared to interfere with these inquiries), consumed their
substance in tedious and expensive proceedings, and were reduced to
beggary before they saw the end of them. The histories of civilized
states furnish but one instance of a similar perversion of justice, of
such violation of the rights of property, and of such waste of human
life; but Cinna, Sylla, and Marius entered vanquished Rome as incensed
victors, and practised without disguise what the viceroy of the
Netherlands performed under the venerable veil of the laws.

Up to the end of the year 1567 the king's arrival had been confidently
expected, and the well-disposed of the people had placed all their last
hopes on this event. The vessels, which Philip had caused to be
equipped expressly for the purpose of meeting him, still lay in the
harbor of Flushing, ready to sail at the first signal; and the town of
Brussels had consented to receive a Spanish garrison, simply because the
king, it was pretended, was to reside within its walls. But this hope
gradually vanished, as he put off the journey from one season to the
next, and the new viceroy very soon began to exhibit powers which
announced him less as a precursor of royalty than as an absolute
minister, whose presence made that of the monarch entirely superfluous.
To compete the distress of the provinces their last good angel was now