Note 262 — Chapter XL

There is a remarkable paper, in the sixth volume of the “Seminario Erudito,” on the causes of the decline of Spain;—remarkable because, though written in the reign of Philip IV., by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, an ecclesiastic of rank, whom Charles III. afterwards asked to have canonized, it yet attributes the origin of the prostration under which Spain suffered in his time mainly to the war with the Netherlands.