Philip spoke truly and from his heart when he expressed his desire to avoid as much as possible the oppression of his subjects, but the science of political economy had not yet been born, and neither he nor his advisers could see that a system of taxation that largely consisted of a crushing fine upon every sale of commodities and food stopped production and trade, and tapped the stream of revenue before it had time to fructify the land. The money from the Indies, or what was left of it after the peculations of officers, all {136} drifted abroad immediately, mostly before landing, to pay for the loans raised on usurious interest, and in return for the articles of extravagance and luxury which were forbidden to be made in Spain, or of which the vicious taxation had killed the production. And so Philip, with the best of intentions, still, be it remembered, a mere boy of nineteen, was enclosed in the vicious circle which the impossible policy of saddling Spain with the defence and assertion of the Catholic faith throughout the world had imposed upon his doomed house. He might, and did, as I have just shown, do his best to economise for the supposed benefit of his people; but it was his people themselves who needed reforming. Whilst they complained that matters got no better, they shouted as loudly as ever that Spain must teach heretics their error at the point of the pike, and they themselves resisted and evaded by every means in their power the sumptuary and other measures intended for the general relief. That these sumptuary measures were to a great extent absurd, and the methods of enforcing them undignified and often ridiculous, is, of course, clear to us now; but the resistance to them was not founded on that ground, but because they went against the prevailing sentiment of the people, at least the people of the capital. The general pretentiousness, idleness, and love of luxury unearned by labour were, indeed, symptomatic of the natural decadence of society, produced by the unfounded inflation and unreal exaltation of the nation for the greater part of a century previously. The decay had gone too far now for any but a great governing genius to remedy it; {137} and Philip, though good hearted, well meaning, and not without ability, certainly was not that. The poison had to work itself out of the national system by slow and painful process, until the patient, exhausted but sound, could build up its strength again. Philip, throughout his life a brilliant idler with good heart and a tender conscience, was condemned to witness the progress of the disease without being able to understand or remedy it; and to watch at the same time with failing heart the parallel decline and threatened extinction of his own historic house.