In Holland alone rebellion did not degenerate into a new species of despotism. While the hidalgos of Castile, impelled by lust for glory and gold, carried into a new world the cross and the cruelty of the old, conquering kingdoms for Charles and Philip, souls for Christ and wealth for themselves; while even in England one sovereign was engaged in persecuting Popery, another Puritanism, and a third both, the citizens of the Netherlands were laying the foundations of a less splendid but far more solid prosperity. As in the Venetian, so in the Dutch Republic, integrity and intelligence in the individual were esteemed more highly than orthodoxy, and an extensive commerce was regarded as more valuable to the State than a rigid creed--an attitude which earned the Hollanders a reputation for worldly weakliness and carnal self-seeking among our stern upholders of sanctity and inspired their brother-Protestants of Barebone’s Parliament to denounce them as enemies of Christ. Briefly, the Dutch had never submitted to the suicidal necessity of extinguishing liberty at home in order to achieve greatness abroad, nor had they subscribed to the mad doctrine which, under one form or another, had obsessed Europe during so many centuries: that it is a good man’s duty to make a hell of this world in order to inherit paradise in the next. It was in Holland, accordingly, that the Jews of Spain and Portugal, fleeing from the holocausts of the Holy Office, found a harbour of safety. Whilst the Netherlands lay under Spanish rule these emigrants were repeatedly expelled from various Dutch cities, owing to the citizens’ dread of seeing the Inquisition--which had been introduced into the country by Charles V. in 1522--established amongst them. But the liberation from the foreign yoke was to change all this--not without a struggle. In 1591 a Jewish consul of the Sultan of Morocco proposed to the burgesses of Middelburg that they should permit the Portuguese Marranos to settle in their town. The shrewd burgesses would gladly have welcomed these commercial allies, but they were obliged to yield to the prejudices of the Protestant clergy, not unnaturally embittered by their long fight for liberty. The opposition, however, was short-lived. The Dutch recognised kindred spirits in the Jews. They shared their implacable hatred of the Spanish tyrant and of Catholicism, as they shared their aptitude for trade. Under William of Orange the dream of toleration became a political reality, and in 1593 the first contingent of Portuguese pseudo-Christians landed at Amsterdam.