The germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have been already noticed in discussing the reigns of Emmanuel and John III.; the country, exhausted by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and deprived of liberty of thought by the deadly influence of the Inquisition, was fast losing its old vitality; and what Portuguese were left in Portugal were either enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to the Court, or in the lower beggars upon the charity of the King and the Church. The Portuguese of the upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese spirit of daring were in Asia; the sturdiest peasantry of the lower classes had found their way to Madeira or Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves, subject to an absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that keen observers, like the Dutchman Cleynaerts, perceived that beneath its appearance of seeming prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the core. Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of the East; it was from the Tagus that the ships from the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins of Bengal, the brocades of Gujarāt, the “calicos” of Calicut, the spices of the “Spice Islands,” the pepper of the Malabar coast, and the teas and silks of China. Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world; the King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. But in spite of wealth and luxury and universal consideration Portugal was a decaying power, and a single shock was sufficient to strike the country from its place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation of heroes, and leave it defenceless against foreign foes.