It was on the same lines that the new industries which developed in the country at the time were organized by their promoters. The manufacture of silk stuffs started in Antwerp, while the State attempted the cultivation of mulberry-trees to provide raw material. Similar attention was devoted by Albert and Isabella to lace-making, which produced one of the most important articles of export. Glass furnaces were established in Ghent, Liége and Hainault, paper-works in Huy, the manufacture of iron cauldrons began in Liége, and soap factories and distilleries were set up in other places.
The solicitude of the central Government was not limited to industry. Roads and canals were repaired all over the country and new important public works were undertaken. Though the project of a Rhine-Scheldt Canal, favoured by Isabella, had to be given up owing to Dutch opposition, the canals from Bruges to Ghent (1614), from Bruges to Ostend (1624-66) and from Bruges to Ypres (1635-39) were completed at this time. Navigation on the Dendre was also improved, and it was in 1656 that the project was made to connect Brussels with the province of Hainault by a waterway. This plan was only realized a century later.
The conditions prevailing in the Catholic Low Countries during the first part of the seventeenth century were, therefore, on the whole, favourable. With regard to world trade and foreign politics the country was entirely paralysed, but the activity of the people and the solicitude of the sovereigns succeeded in realizing the economic restoration of the country as far as this restoration depended upon them. The real economic decadence of Belgium did not occur on the date of the separation, but fifty years later, during the second half of the seventeenth century, when its exports were reduced by the protective tariffs of France, when the Thirty Years' War ruined the German market and when Spain remained the only country open for its produce.
This relative prosperity extended beyond the twelve years of the truce. For, even when hostilities were resumed, they did not deeply affect the life of the nation, most of the operations being limited to the frontier. Some Belgian historians have drawn a very flattering picture of this period and extolled the personal qualities of Albert and Isabella. We must, however, realize that, in spite of the archduke's good intentions, the promises made at the peace of Arras were not kept, that the States General were only twice assembled and that all the political guarantees obtained by the patriots from Farnese were disregarded. Spanish garrisons remained in the country and the representatives of the people had no control over the expenditure. In fact, Belgium was nearer to having an absolutist monarchical régime than it had ever been before. The Council of State was only assembled to conciliate the nobility, whose loyalty was still further encouraged by the granting of honours, such as that of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and entrusting to them missions to foreign countries. The upper bourgeoisie, on the other hand, were largely permitted to enter the ranks of the nobility by receiving titles. From 1602 to 1638 no less than forty-one estates were raised to the rank of counties, marquisates and principalities, and a contemporary writer complains that "as many nobles are made now in one year as formerly in a hundred." It was among these new nobles, or would-be nobles, who constituted a class very similar to that of the English gentry of the same period, that the State recruited the officers of its army and many officials, whose loyalty was, of course, ensured.