possible.  His persecutions swept the land of those industrious classes which had made it the rich and prosperous commonwealth it had been so lately; while, at the same time, he found a “Peruvian mine,” as he pretended, in the imposition of a tenth penny upon every one of its commercial transactions.  He thought that a people, crippled as this had been by the operations of the Blood Council; could pay ten per cent., not annually but daily; not upon its income, but upon its capital; not once only, but every time the value constituting the capital changed hands.  He had boasted that he should require no funds from Spain, but that, on the contrary, he should make annual remittances to the royal treasury at home, from the proceeds of his imposts and confiscations; yet, notwithstanding these resources, and notwithstanding twenty-five millions of gold in five years, sent by Philip from Madrid, the exchequer of the provinces was barren and bankrupt when his successor arrived.  Requesens found neither a penny in the public treasury nor the means of raising one.

As an administrator of the civil and judicial affairs of the country, Alva at once reduced its institutions to a frightful simplicity.  In the place of the ancient laws of which the Netherlanders were so proud, he substituted the Blood Council.  This tribunal was even more arbitrary than the Inquisition.  Never was a simpler apparatus for tyranny devised, than this great labor-saving machine.  Never was so great a, quantity of murder and robbery achieved with such despatch and regularity.  Sentences, executions, and confiscations, to an incredible extent, were turned out daily with appalling precision.  For this invention, Alva is alone responsible.  The tribunal and its councillors were the work and the creatures of his hand, and faithfully did they accomplish the dark purpose of their existence.  Nor can it be urged, in extenuation of the Governor’s crimes, that he was but the blind and fanatically loyal slave of his sovereign.  A noble nature could not have contaminated itself with such slaughter-house work, but might have sought to mitigate the royal policy, without forswearing allegiance.  A nature less rigid than iron, would at least have manifested compunction, as it found itself converted into a fleshless instrument of massacre.  More decided than his master, however, he seemed, by his promptness, to rebuke the dilatory genius of Philip.  The King seemed, at times, to loiter over his work, teasing and tantalising his appetite for vengeance, before it should be gratified:  Alva, rapid and brutal, scorned such epicureanism.  He strode with gigantic steps over haughty statutes and popular constitutions; crushing alike the magnates who claimed a bench of monarchs for their jury, and the ignoble artisans who could appeal only to the laws of their land.  From the pompous and theatrical scaffolds of Egmont and Horn, to the nineteen halters prepared by Master Karl, to hang up the chief bakers and brewers of Brussels