Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/87

 RISE OF HOLLAND'S POWER 59 she merited by her services to mankind. It is scarcely too much to say that the political ref ormation of Europe dates from the Dutch Declaration of Independence in 1581. Then for the first time was asserted and enforced the principle that governments exist for nations, not nations for governments, as no abstract dogma, but as a truth for which a whole people was willing to die. The vigour which achieved the liberty of Holland pulsed through every vein of her internal and external life. Amsterdam, the city of refuge from Parma's havoc at Antwerp, became the European emporium of Indian commerce, richer and more powerful by far than Venice, Genoa, or Lisbon in their prime. Her manu- factures were improved and her financial strength in- creased by the Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition, and who gave to Amsterdam alike the genius of Spinoza and the diamond-cutting industry which centres there to this day. Dutch navigators put a girdle of discovery and colonization round the globe from New Holland, now Australia, to New Amsterdam, now New York. Dutch agriculture, by transferring the potato and tur- nip from the garden to the field, created a new winter food for men and cattle, as has been pointed out by the political economist Thorold Rogers. This change made possible the growth of population in modern Eu- rope, feeding threefold the inhabitants off areas which had barely supported one-third iii frequent peril of fam- ine, and contributing more than any other cause to ban- ish leprosy from Christendom. At the same time the Dutch leaped forward to the front rank of intellectual