dicial and fiscal officials on the central administration. Through these new and efficient agencies he created an excellent police system as well as a body of laws which fostered the social and industrial life of the people, besides promoting agriculture as no other prince ever had. His commercial legislation was restrictive only when capitalistic excesses or the growth of the proletariat demanded restraint. The edict of 1531 for the Netherlands (promulgated 1540) and the state organization for the care of the poor illustrate this. The creation of these authorities and this system of laws at the same time had the effect of limiting the power of the Cortes and the States General, both of which bodies thereafter retained only the right of taxation, in the exercise of which, moreover, Charles succeeded in accustoming them to regular annual budgets, by explaining to them his own policy and enlightening them as to the needs of the country, and thus showing them why they should contribute revenue. With individuals Charles dealt still more effectivelyin Spain chiefly with the burghers, in the Netherlands with the higher nobility. The latter he won to his support by bestowing on them the most important offices and holding out hopes of the Golden Fleece; the former he hoped to win by leaving them the control of taxation, so that they might regulate it uniformly, and therefore less oppressively. He controlled the clergy by transferring to them an almost general right to the disposal of benefices, which had been granted by the popes either to his predecessors or to himself. He strove especially to foster the progressive industrial elements of the middle class. At the beginning of the century the old cloth industries of Flanders had been seriously threatened by English competition; under Charles the industries of the Netherlands were effectually protected by an entire change in system which may be regarded as a first step towards capitalistic indus...
