already the Councils of State, of Finance, and of Castile, besides the Council of Aragon; and in addition the Councils of the Inquisition, of the Military Orders, and of the Cruzada. Under Charles we have in addition the Chamber, the Council of War, the Council of the Indies, the Council of Flanders, and the Council of Italy. The several fields of these Councils, with a monarch who was absent from Spain for one-half of the total period of his reign, required to be carefully limited and circumscribed. This led in its turn to the transaction of more and more business by writing, and that to red-tape and its accompanying delays; so that the excessive elaboration of bureaucratic methods tended to hamper and impede the despatch of business. This became even more conspicuous in the time of Philip.
The problem of the decline of Spain has often occupied the minds of historians, who are at a loss to discover why the country which fills so large a place on the European canvas during the sixteenth century afterwards fell into impotence and decay. But the contrast has generally been exaggerated. Spain was never very rich and never very powerful. Individual Spaniards showed great enterprise and great talents. Ferdinand, and after him Charles V, obtained from their country all the energy of which it was capable. The Spanish foot-soldier had admirable qualities. But the work of Charles V depended as much upon the Netherlands as upon Spain; Italian enterprise was supported as much from the Low Countries as from Spain; and from both together support was always insufficient, and had to be eked put by local oppression. No great national impulse raised the Habsburgs to the head of Europe; the conquest of the Indies was due more to good fortune and the enterprise of a few men than to the greatness of the Spanish nation. When Spain lost the stimulus of great rulers, when she was deprived of the efficient support of the Netherland commercial wealth, when she was thrown upon her own resources, then the true weakness of the national character disclosed itself. The Spaniards could never be a great nation because they were never industrious.
Nevertheless, if Spain ever had an age of industry, it was in the time of Charles V. From the time of the conquest of Mexico an immense opening was offered to Spanish trade. Charles was anxious to encourage this trade. In 1529 he opened the export trade to a number of cities of the East and the North, and broke down to some extent the monopoly of Seville. As a consequence many industries increased by leaps and bounds. The silk industry in Toledo and Seville, the cloth industry in Toledo, Cordova, Cuenca and Segovia reached considerable dimensions. The same stimulus reacted upon agriculture and the wool-growing industry. For a time the new discoveries seemed to have opened an industrial era in Spain. But before long the influx of precious metals, rapid after the conquest of Mexico, more rapid after the conquest of Peru, and immense after the discovery of the silver mines of Potosi,
