[Sidenote: THE NETHERLANDS IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
During the period under consideration, the seventeenth century especially, the monetary history of the Netherlands supplies the key to that of the surrounding nations. The history of her monetary exchanges has yet to be written, and of her Mint ordinances very little is accessible, as compared, e.g., with France. But this is more than compensated by the numerous "plakkaats" or proclamations of the tariff of coins, which are to us practical indicators of the rates of exchange. The Netherlands, as has been already said, were the centre of European commerce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Italian States had been in the fourteenth and fifteenth; and every change in the precious metals or in the coins showed itself in the Antwerp Bourse as surely and swiftly as to-day in London. As prompt to take knowledge of these changes as Florence had been two centuries earlier, the authorities tabulated the various coinages which were current in the Low Countries,--and practically that meant the coinage of commercial Europe,--tariffed them against their own by proclamation, and instantly accommodated themselves to each new change or variation of value by a new proclamation and a new tariff. These proclamations, therefore, give us the measure and course of the monetary movements of the time in fullest and most welcome details.
It has been already shown that this action of the government of the Netherlands has a twofold aspect. From one side it expresses and regulates the natural flow and ebb of commerce, just as exchange rates and bullion remittances do to-day. And in this sense it was perfectly normal, healthy, and sound, more especially in so far as it provided for the gradual drawing away overplus metal to the East. But the Governments of Europe were yet under the spell of the delusion as to a balance of trade payable in gold--that delusion which was, later, dignified in history by the name of the mercantile theory. Nor had they yet lost the traces of that mediæval craft and lawlessness which rose from, and prompted to, the mere desire of robbing or pilfering their neighbour's store of precious metal as the first act of self-defence. Further than this the monetary system of Europe--unconsciously bimetallic and with an appalling variety of ratio prevalent at the same moment in different places--lay open, helpless and defenceless, and inviting to the bullionist, financier, or arbitragist. In so far as this element of national greed and dishonesty, or private and unprincipled gain, entered into the legislative enactments of the Netherlands, it condemns them as mercenary, and the monetary straits or tightness, not to say crisis and panic which ensued, as unnecessary and therefore in the highest degree lamentable.