Maurice of Nassau too was a formidable rival to Henry. The stadholder-prince was no republican. He was a good patriot, a noble soldier, an honest man. But his father had been offered the sovereignty of Holland and Zeeland, and the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone, in all human probability, prevented the great prince from becoming constitutional monarch of all the Netherlands, Batavian and Belgic.

Maurice himself asserted that not only had he been offered a million of dollars, and large estates besides in Germany, if he would leave the provinces to their fate, but that the archdukes had offered, would he join his fortunes with theirs, to place him in a higher position over all the Netherlands than he had ever enjoyed in the United Provinces, and that they had even unequivocally offered him the sovereignty over the whole land.

Maurice was a man of truth, and we have no right to dispute the accuracy of the extraordinary statement. He must however have reflected upon the offer once made by the Prince of Darkness from the mountain top, and have asked himself by what machinery the archdukes proposed to place him in possession of such a kingdom.

There had, however, been serious question among leading Dutch statesmen of making him constitutional, hereditary monarch of the United Netherlands. As late as 1602 a secret conference was held at the house of Olden-Barneveld, in which the Advocate had himself urged the claims of the prince to the sovereignty, and reminded his guests that the signed and sealed documents—with the concurrence of the Amsterdam municipality alone lacking—by which William the Silent had been invited to assume the crown were still in the possession of his son.

Nothing came of these deliberations. It was agreed that to stir in the matter at that moment would be premature, and that the pursuit by Maurice of the monarchy in the circumstances then existing would not only over-burthen him with expense, but make him a more conspicuous mark than ever for the assassin. It is certain that the prince manifested no undue anxiety at any period in regard to those transactions.

Subsequently, as Olden-Barneveld's personal power increased, and as the negotiations for peace became more and more likely to prove successful, the Advocate lost all relish for placing his great rival on a throne. The whole project, with the documents and secret schemes therewith connected, became mere alms for oblivion. Barneveld himself, although of comparatively humble birth and station, was likely with time to exercise more real power in the State than either Henry or Maurice; and thus while there were three individuals who in different ways aspired to supreme power, the republic, notwithstanding, asserted and established itself.

Freedom of government and freedom, of religion were, on the whole, assisted by this triple antagonism. The prince, so soon as war was over, hated the Advocate and his daily increasing power more and more. He allied himself more closely than ever with the Gomarites and the clerical party in general, and did his best to inflame the persecuting spirit, already existing in the provinces, against the Catholics and the later sects of Protestants.

Jeannin warned him that "by thus howling with the priests" he would be suspected of more desperately ambitious designs than he perhaps really cherished.

On the other hand, Barneveld was accused of a willingness to wink at the introduction, privately and quietly, of the Roman Catholic worship. That this was the deadliest of sins, there was no doubt whatever in the minds of his revilers. When it was added that he was suspected of the Arminian leprosy, and that he could tolerate the thought that a virtuous man or woman, not predestined from all time for salvation, could possibly find the way to heaven, language becomes powerless to stigmatize his depravity. Whatever the punishment impending over his head in this world or the next, it is certain that the cause of human freedom was not destined on the whole to lose ground through the life-work of Barneveld.

A champion of liberties rather than of liberty, he defended his fatherland with heart and soul against the stranger; yet the government of that fatherland was, in his judgments to be transferred from the hand of the foreigner, not to the self-governing people, but to the provincial corporations. For the People he had no respect, and perhaps little affection. He often spoke of popular rights with contempt. Of popular sovereignty he had no conception. His patriotism, like his ambition, was provincial. Yet his perceptions as to eternal necessity in all healthy governments taught him that comprehensible relations between the state and the population were needful to the very existence of a free commonwealth. The United Provinces, he maintained, were not a republic, but a league of seven provinces very loosely hung together, a mere provisional organization for which it was not then possible to substitute anything better. He expressed this opinion with deep regret, just as the war of independence was closing, and added his conviction that, without some well-ordered government, no republic could stand.

Yet, as time wore on, the Advocate was destined to acquiesce more and more in this defective constitution. A settled theory there was none, and it would have been difficult legally and historically to establish the central sovereignty of the States-General as matter of right.

Thus Barneveld, who was anything but a democrat, became, almost unwittingly, the champion of the least venerable or imposing of all forms of aristocracy—an oligarchy of traders who imagined themselves patricians. Corporate rights, not popular liberty, seemed, in his view, the precious gains made by such a prodigious expenditure of time, money, and blood. Although such acquisitions were practically a vast addition to the stock of human freedom then existing in the world, yet torrents of blood and millions of treasure were to be wasted in the coming centuries before mankind was to convince itself that a republic is only to be made powerful and perpetual by placing itself upon the basis of popular right rather than on that of municipal privilege.

The singular docility of the Dutch people, combined with the simplicity, honesty, and practical sagacity of the earlier burgher patricians, made the defects of the system tolerable for a longer period than might have been expected; nor was it until theological dissensions had gathered to such intensity as to set the whole commonwealth aflame that the grave defects in the political structure could be fairly estimated.

It would be anticipating a dark chapter in the history of the United Provinces were the reader's attention now to be called to those fearful convulsions. The greatest reserve is therefore necessary at present in alluding to the subject.

It was not to be expected that an imperious, energetic but somewhat limited nature like that of Barneveld should at that epoch thoroughly comprehend the meaning of religious freedom. William the Silent alone seems to have risen to that height. A conscientious Calvinist himself, the father of his country would have been glad to see Protestant and Papist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Anabaptist living together in harmony and political equality. This was not to be. The soul of the immortal prince could not inspire the hearts of his contemporaries. That Barneveld was disposed to a breadth of religious sympathy unusual in those days, seems certain. It was inevitable, too, that the mild doctrines of Arminius should be more in harmony with such a character than were the fierce dogmas of Calvin. But the struggle, either to force Arminianism upon the Church which considered itself the established one in the Netherlands, or to expel the Calvinists from it, had not yet begun; although the seeds of religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants had already been sown broadcast.

The day was not far distant when the very Calvinists, to whom, more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England, and America are due, were to be hunted out of churches into farm-houses, suburban hovels, and canal-boats by the arm of provincial sovereignty and in the name of state-rights, as pitilessly as the early reformers had been driven out of cathedrals in the name of emperor and pope; and when even those refuges for conscientious worship were to be denied by the dominant sect. And the day was to come, too, when the Calvinists, regaining ascendency in their turn, were to hunt the heterodox as they had themselves been hunted; and this, at the very moment when their fellow Calvinists of England were driven by the Church of that kingdom into the American wilderness.

Toleration—that intolerable term of insult to all who love liberty—had not yet been discovered. It had scarcely occurred to Arminian or Presbyterian that civil authority and ecclesiastical doctrine could be divorced from each other. As the individual sovereignty of the seven states established itself more and more securely, the right of provincial power to dictate religious dogmas, and to superintend the popular conscience, was exercised with a placid arrogance which papal infallibility could scarcely exceed. The alternation was only between the sects, each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting. The lessened intensity of persecution however, which priesthood and authority were now allowed to exercise, marked the gains secured.

Yet while we censure—as we have a right to do from the point of view which we have gained after centuries—the crimes committed by bigotry against liberty, we should be false, to our faith in human progress did we not acknowledge our debt of gratitude to the hot gospellers of Holland and England.

The doctrine of predestination, the consciousness of being chosen soldiers of Christ, inspired those puritans, who founded the commonwealths of England, of Holland, and of America, with a contempt of toil, danger, and death which enabled them to accomplish things almost supernatural.

No uncouthness of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with perfect composure.

The early puritan at least believed. The very intensity of his belief made him—all unconsciously to himself, and narrowed as was his view of his position—the great instrument by which the widest human liberty was to be gained for all mankind.

The elected favourite of the King of kings feared the power of no earthly king. Accepting in rapture the decrees of a supernatural tyranny, he rose on mighty wings above the reach of human wrath. Prostrating himself before a God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice, he naturally imitated the attributes which he believed to be divine. It was inevitable, therefore, that Barneveld, and those who thought with him, when they should attempt to force the children of Belial into the company of the elect and to drive the faithful out of their own churches, should be detested as bitterly as papists had ever been.

Had Barneveld's intellect been broad enough to imagine in a great republic the separation of Church and State, he would deserve a tenderer sympathy, but he would have been far in advance of his age. It is not cheerful to see so powerful an intellect and so patriotic a character daring to entrust the relations between man and his Maker to the decree of a trading corporation. But alas! the world was to wait for centuries until it should learn that the State can best defend religion by letting it alone, and that the political arm is apt to wither with palsy when it attempts to control the human conscience.

It is not entirely the commonwealth of the United Netherlands that is of importance in the epoch which I have endeavoured to illustrate. History can have neither value nor charm for those who are not impressed with a conviction of its continuity.

More than ever during the period which we call modern history has this idea of the continuousness of our race, and especially of the inhabitants of Europe and America, become almost oppressive to the imagination. There is a sense of immortality even upon earth when we see the succession of heritages in the domains of science, of intellectual and material wealth by which mankind, generation after generation, is enriching itself.

If this progress be a dream, if mankind be describing a limited circle instead of advancing towards the infinite; then no study can be more contemptible than the study of history.

Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition for the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the, front rank of contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world. It is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization by the example of the Dutch republic. It has been a model which has been imitated, in many respects, by great nations. It has even been valuable in its very defects; indicating to the patient observer many errors most important to avoid.

Therefore, had the little republic sunk for ever in the sea so soon as the treaty of peace had been signed at Antwerp, its career would have been prolific of good for all succeeding time.

Exactly at the moment when a splendid but decaying despotism, founded upon wrong—upon oppression of the human body and the immortal soul, upon slavery, in short, of the worst kind—was awaking from its insane dream of universal empire to a consciousness of its own decay, the new republic was recognised among the nations.

It would hardly be incorrect to describe the Holland of the beginning of the seventeenth century as the exact reverse of Spain. In, the commonwealth labour was most honourable; in the kingdom it was vile. In the north to be idle was accounted and punished as a crime. In the southern peninsula, to be contaminated with mechanical, mercantile, commercial, manufacturing pursuits, was to be accursed. Labour was for slaves, and at last the mere spectacle of labour became so offensive that even the slaves were expelled from the land. To work was as degrading in the south as to beg or to steal was esteemed unworthy of humanity in the north. To think a man's thought upon high matters of religion and government, and through a thousand errors to pursue the truth; with the aid of the Most High and with the best use of human reason, was a privilege secured by the commonwealth, at the expense of two generations of continuous bloodshed. To lie fettered, soul and body, at the feet of authority wielded by a priesthood in its last stage of corruption, and monarchy almost reduced to imbecility, was the lot of the chivalrous, genial; but much oppressed Spaniard.

The pictures painted of the republic by shrewd and caustic observers, not inclined by nature or craft to portray freedom in too engaging colours, seem, when contrasted with those revealed of Spain, almost like enthusiastic fantasies of an ideal commonwealth.

During the last twenty years of the great war the material prosperity of the Netherlands had wonderfully increased. They had, become the first commercial nation in the world. They had acquired the supremacy of the seas. The population of Amsterdam had in twenty years increased from seventy thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand, and was destined to be again more than doubled in the coming decade. The population of Antwerp had sunk almost as rapidly as that of its rival had increased; having lessened by fifty thousand during the same period. The commercial capital of the obedient provinces, having already lost much of its famous traffic by the great changes in the commercial current of the world, was unable to compete with the cities of the United Provinces in the vast trade which the geographical discoveries of the preceding century had opened to civilization. Freedom of thought and action were denied, and without such liberty it was impossible for oceanic commerce to thrive. Moreover, the possession by the Hollanders of the Scheld forts below Antwerp, and of Flushing at the river's mouth, suffocated the ancient city, and would of itself have been sufficient to paralyze all its efforts.

In Antwerp the exchange, where once thousands of the great merchants of the earth held their daily financial parliament, now echoed to the solitary footfall of the passing stranger. Ships lay rotting at the quays; brambles grow in the commercial streets. In Amsterdam the city had been enlarged by two-thirds, and those who swarmed thither to seek their fortunes could not wait for the streets to be laid out and houses to be built, but established themselves in the environs, building themselves hovels and temporary residences, although certain to find their encampments swept away with the steady expanse of the city. As much land as could be covered by a man's foot was worth a ducat in gold.

In every branch of human industry these republicans took the lead. On that scrap of solid ground, rescued by human energy from the ocean, were the most fertile pastures in the world. On those pastures grazed the most famous cattle in the world. An ox often weighed more than two thousand pounds. The cows produced two and three calves at a time, the sheep four and five lambs. In a single village four thousand kine were counted. Butter and cheese were exported to the annual value of a million, salted provisions to an incredible extent. The farmers were industrious, thriving, and independent. It is an amusing illustration of the agricultural thrift and republican simplicity of this people that on one occasion a farmer proposed to Prince Maurice that he should marry his daughter, promising with her a dowry of a hundred thousand florins.

The mechanical ingenuity of the Netherlanders, already celebrated by Julius Caesar and by Tacitus, had lost nothing of its ancient fame. The contemporary world confessed that in many fabrics the Hollanders were at the head of mankind. Dutch linen, manufactured of the flax grown on their own fields or imported from the obedient provinces, was esteemed a fitting present for kings to make and to receive. The name of the country had passed into the literature of England as synonymous with the delicate fabric itself. The Venetians confessed themselves equalled, if not outdone, by the crystal workers and sugar refiners of the northern republic. The tapestries of Arras—the name of which Walloon city had become a household word of luxury in all modern languages—were now transplanted to the soil of freedom, more congenial to the advancement of art. Brocades of the precious metals; splendid satins and velvets; serges and homely fustians; laces of thread and silk; the finer and coarser manufactures of clay and porcelain; iron, steel, and all useful fabrics for the building and outfitting of ships; substantial broadcloths manufactured of wool imported from Scotland—all this was but a portion of the industrial production of the provinces.

They supplied the deficiency of coal, not then an article readily obtained by commerce, with other remains of antediluvian forests long since buried in the sea, and now recovered from its depths and made useful and portable by untiring industry. Peat was not only the fuel for the fireside, but for the extensive fabrics of the country, and its advantages so much excited the admiration of the Venetian envoys that they sent home samples of it, in the hope that the lagunes of Venice might prove as prolific of this indispensable article as the polders of Holland.

But the foundation of the national wealth, the source of the apparently fabulous power by which the republic had at last overthrown her gigantic antagonist, was the ocean. The republic was sea-born and sea-sustained.

She had nearly one hundred thousand sailors, and three thousand ships. The sailors were the boldest, the best disciplined, and the most experienced in the-world, whether for peaceable seafaring or ocean warfare. The ships were capable of furnishing from out of their number in time of need the most numerous and the best appointed navy then known to mankind.

The republic had the carrying trade for all nations. Feeling its very existence dependent upon commerce, it had strode centuries in advance of the contemporary world in the liberation of trade. But two or three per cent. ad valorem was levied upon imports; foreign goods however being subject, as well as internal products, to heavy imposts in the way of both direct and indirect taxation.

Every article of necessity or luxury known was to be purchased in profusion and at reasonable prices in the warehouses of Holland.

A swarm of river vessels and fly-boats were coming daily through the rivers of Germany, France and the Netherlands, laden with the agricultural products and the choice manufactures of central and western Europe. Wine and oil, and delicate fabrics in thread and wool, came from France, but no silks, velvets, nor satins; for the great Sully had succeeded in persuading his master that the white mulberry would not grow in his kingdom, and that silk manufactures were an impossible dream for France. Nearly a thousand ships were constantly employed in the Baltic trade. The forests of Holland were almost as extensive as those which grew on Norwegian hills, but they were submerged. The foundation of a single mansion required a grove, and wood was extensively used in the superstructure. The houses, built of a framework of substantial timber, and filled in with brick or rubble, were raised almost as rapidly as tents, during the prodigious expansion of industry towards the end of the war. From the realms of the Osterlings, or shores of the Baltic, came daily fleets laden with wheat and other grains so that even in time of famine the granaries of the republic were overflowing, and ready to dispense the material of life to the outer world.

Eight hundred vessels of lesser size but compact build were perpetually fishing for herrings on the northern coasts. These hardy mariners, the militia of the sea, who had learned in their life of hardship and daring the art of destroying Spanish and Portuguese armadas, and confronting the dangers of either pole, passed a long season on the deep. Commercial voyagers as well as fishermen, they salted their fish as soon as taken from the sea, and transported them to the various ports of Europe, thus reducing their herrings into specie before their return, and proving that a fishery in such hands was worth more than the mines of Mexico and Peru.

It is customary to speak of the natural resources of a country as furnishing a guarantee of material prosperity. But here was a republic almost without natural resources, which had yet supplied by human intelligence and thrift what a niggard nature had denied. Spain was overflowing with unlimited treasure, and had possessed half the world in fee; and Spain was bankrupt, decaying, sinking into universal pauperism. Holland, with freedom of thought, of commerce, of speech, of action, placed itself, by intellectual power alone, in the front rank of civilization.

From Cathay, from the tropical coasts of Africa, and from farthest Ind, came every drug, spice, or plant, every valuable jewel, every costly fabric, that human ingenuity had discovered or created. The Spaniards, maintaining a frail tenure upon a portion of those prolific regions, gathered their spice harvests at the point of the sword, and were frequently unable to prevent their northern rivals from ravaging such fields as they had not yet been able to appropriate.

Certainly this conduct of the Hollanders was barbarism and supreme selfishness, if judged by the sounder political economy of our time. Yet it should never be forgotten that the contest between Spain and Holland in those distant regions, as everywhere else, was war to the knife between superstition and freedom, between the spirits of progress and of dogma. Hard blows and foul blows were struck in such a fight, and humanity, although gaining at last immense results, had much to suffer and much to learn ere the day was won.

But Spain was nearly beaten out of those eastern regions, and the very fact that the naval supremacy of the republic placed her ancient tyrant at her mercy was the main reason for Spain to conclude the treaty of truce. Lest she should lose the India trade entirely, Spain consented to the treaty article by which, without mentioning the word, she conceded the thing. It was almost pathetic to witness, as we have witnessed, this despotism in its dotage, mumbling so long over the formal concession to her conqueror of a portion of that India trade which would have been entirely wrested from herself had the war continued. And of this Spain was at heart entirely convinced. Thus the Portuguese, once the lords and masters, as they had been the European discoverers, of those prolific regions and of the ocean highways which led to them, now came with docility to the republic which they had once affected to despise, and purchased the cloves and the allspice, the nutmegs and the cinnamon, of which they had held the monopoly; or waited with patience until the untiring Hollanders should bring the precious wares to the peninsula ports.

A Dutch Indianian would make her voyage to the antipodes and her return in less time than was spent by a Portuguese or a Spaniard in the outward voyage. To accomplish such an enterprise in two years was accounted a wonder of rapidity, and when it is remembered that inland navigation through France by canal and river from the North Sea to the Mediterranean was considered both speedier and safer, because the sea voyage between the same points might last four or five months, it must be admitted that two years occupied in passing from one end of the earth to the other and back again might well seem a miracle.

The republic was among the wealthiest and the most powerful of organized States. Her population might be estimated at three millions and a half, about equal to that of England at the same period. But she was richer than England. Nowhere in the world was so large a production in proportion to the numbers of a people. Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers. Every one was at work. Vagabonds, idlers, and do-nothings, such as must be in every community, were caught up by the authorities and made to earn their bread. The devil's pillow, idleness, was smoothed for no portion of the population.

There were no beggars, few paupers, no insolently luxurious and ostentatiously idle class. The modesty, thrift, and simple elegance of the housekeeping, even among the wealthy, was noted by travellers with surprise. It will be remembered with how much amused wonder, followed by something like contempt, the, magnificent household of Spinola, during his embassy at the Hague, was surveyed by the honest burghers of Holland. The authorities showed their wisdom in permitting the absurd exhibition, as an example of what should be shunned, in spite of grave remonstrances from many of the citizens. Drunken Helotism is not the only form of erring humanity capable of reading lessons to a republic.

There had been monasteries, convents, ecclesiastical establishments of all kinds in the country, before the great war between Holland and the Inquisition. These had, as a matter of course, been confiscated as the strife went on. The buildings, farms, and funds, once the property of the Church, had not, however, been seized upon, as in other Protestant lands, by rapacious monarchs, and distributed among great nobles according to royal caprice. Monarchs might give the revenue of a suppressed convent to a cook, as reward for a successful pudding; the surface of Britain and the continent might be covered with abbeys and monasteries now converted into lordly palaces—passing thus from the dead hand of the Church into the idle and unproductive palm of the noble; but the ancient ecclesiastical establishments of the free Netherlands were changed into eleemosynary institutions, admirably organized and administered with wisdom and economy, where orphans of the poor, widows of those slain in the battles for freedom by land and sea, and the aged and the infirm, who had deserved well of the republic in the days of their strength, were educated or cherished at the expense of the public, thus endowed from the spoils of the Church.

In Spain, monasteries upon monasteries were rising day by day, as if there were not yet receptacles enough for monks and priests, while thousands upon thousands of Spaniards were pressing into the ranks of the priesthood, and almost forcing themselves into monasteries, that they might be privileged to beg, because ashamed to work. In the United Netherlands the confiscated convents, with their revenues, were appropriated for the good of those who were too young or too old to labour, and too poor to maintain themselves without work. Need men look further than to this simple fact to learn why Spain was decaying while the republic was rising?

The ordinary budget of the United Provinces was about equal to that of England, varying not much from four millions of florins, or four hundred thousand pounds. But the extraordinary revenue was comparatively without limits, and there had been years, during the war, when the citizens had taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent. on each individual income, and doubled the receipts of the exchequer. The budget was proposed once a year, by the council of state, and voted by the States-General, who assigned the quota of each province; that of Holland being always one-half of the whole, that of Zeeland sixteen per cent., and that of the other five of course in lesser proportions. The revenue was collected in the separate provinces, one-third of the whole being retained for provincial expenses, and the balance paid into the general treasury. There was a public debt, the annual interest of which amounted to 200,000 florins. During the war, money had been borrowed at as high a rate as thirty-six per cent., but at the conclusion of hostilities the States could borrow at six per cent., and the whole debt was funded on that basis. Taxation was enormously heavy, but patriotism caused it to be borne with cheerfulness, and productive industry made it comparatively light. Rents were charged twenty-five per cent. A hundred per cent. was levied upon beer, wine, meat, salt, spirits. Other articles of necessity and luxury were almost as severely taxed. It is not easy to enumerate the tax-list, scarcely anything foreign or domestic being exempted, while the grave error was often committed of taxing the same article, in different forms, four, five, and six times.

The people virtually taxed themselves, although the superstition concerning the State, as something distinct from and superior to the people, was to linger long and work infinite mischief among those seven republics which were never destined to be welded theoretically and legally into a union. The sacredness of corporations had succeeded, in a measure, to the divinity which hedges kings. Nevertheless, those corporations were so numerous as to be effectively open to a far larger proportion of the population than, in those days, had ever dreamed before of participating in the Government. The magistracies were in general unpaid and little coveted, being regarded as a burthen and a responsibility rather than an object of ambition. The jurisconsults, called pensionaries, who assisted the municipal authorities, received, however, a modest salary, never exceeding 1500 florins a year.

These numerous bodies, provincial and municipal, elected themselves themselves by supplying their own vacancies. The magistrates were appointed by the stadholder, on a double or triple nomination from the municipal board. This was not impartial suffrage nor manhood suffrage. The germ of a hateful burgher-oligarchy was in the system, but, as compared with Spain, where municipal magistracies were sold by the crown at public auction; or with France, where every office in church, law, magistrature, or court was an object of merchandise disposed of in open market, the system was purity itself, and marked a great advance in the science of government.

It should never be forgotten, moreover, that while the presidents and judges of the highest courts of judicature in other civilized lands were at the mercy of an irresponsible sovereign, and held office—even although it had been paid for in solid specie—at his pleasure, the supreme justices of the high courts of appeal at the Hague were nominated by a senate, and confirmed by a stadholder, and that they exercised their functions for life, or so long as they conducted themselves virtuously in their high office—'quamdiu se bene gesserint.'

If one of the great objects of a civilized community is to secure to all men their own—'ut sua tenerent'—surely it must be admitted that the republic was in advance of all contemporary States in the laying down of this vital principle, the independence of judges.

As to the army and navy of the United Provinces, enough has been said, in earlier chapters of these volumes, to indicate the improvements introduced by Prince Maurice, and now carried to the highest point of perfection ever attained in that period. There is no doubt whatever, that for discipline, experience, equipment, effectiveness of movement, and general organization, the army of the republic was the model army of Europe. It amounted to but thirty thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred cavalry, but this number was a large one for a standing army at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was composed of a variety of materials, Hollanders, Walloons, Flemings, Scotch, English, Irish, Germans, but all welded together into a machine of perfect regularity. The private foot-soldier received twelve florins for a so-called month of forty-two days, the drummer and corporal eighteen, the lieutenant fifty-two, and the captain one hundred and fifty florins. Prompt payment was made every week. Obedience was implicit; mutiny, such as was of periodical recurrence in the archduke's army, entirely unknown. The slightest theft was punished with the gallows, and there was therefore no thieving.

The most accurate and critical observers confessed, almost against their will, that no army in Europe could compare with the troops of the States. As to the famous regiments of Sicily, and the ancient legions of Naples and Milan, a distinguished Venetian envoy, who had seen all the camps and courts of Christendom, and was certainly not disposed to overrate the Hollanders at the expense of the Italians, if any rivalry between them had been possible, declared that every private soldier in the republic was fit to be a captain in any Italian army; while, on the other hand, there was scarcely an Italian captain who would be accepted as a private in any company of the States. So low had the once famous soldiery of Alva, Don John, and Alexander Farnese descended.

The cavalry of the republic was even more perfectly organized than was the infantry. "I want words to describe its perfection," said Contarini. The pay was very high, and very prompt. A captain received four hundred florins a month (of forty-two days), a lieutenant one hundred and eighty florins, and other officers and privates in proportion. These rates would be very high in our own day. When allowance is made for the difference in the value of money at the respective epochs, the salaries are prodigious; but the thrifty republic found its account in paying well and paying regularly the champions on whom so much depended, and by whom such splendid services had been rendered.

While the soldiers in the pay of Queen Elizabeth were crawling to her palace gates to die of starvation before her eyes; while the veterans of Spain and of Italy had organized themselves into a permanent military, mutinous republic, on the soil of the so-called obedient Netherland, because they were left by their masters without clothing or food; the cavalry and infantry of the Dutch commonwealth, thanks to the organizing spirit and the wholesome thrift of the burgher authorities, were contented, obedient, well fed, well clothed, and well paid; devoted to their Government, and ever ready to die in its defence.

Nor was it only on the regular army that reliance was placed. On the contrary, every able-bodied man in the country was liable to be called upon to serve, at any moment, in the militia. All were trained to arms, and provided with arms, and there had been years during this perpetual war in which one man out of three of the whole male population was ready to be mustered at any moment into the field.

Even more could be said in praise of the navy than has been stated of the armies of the republic; for the contemporary accounts of foreigners, and of foreigners who were apt to be satirical, rather than enthusiastic, when describing the institutions, leading personages, and customs of other countries, seemed ever to speak of the United Provinces in terms of eulogy. In commerce, as in war, the naval supremacy of the republic was indisputable. It was easy for the States to place two thousand vessels of war in commission, if necessary, of tonnage varying from four hundred to twelve hundred tons, to man them with the hardiest and boldest sailors in the world, and to despatch them with promptness to any quarter of the globe.

It was recognised as nearly impossible to compel a war-vessel of the republic to surrender. Hardly an instance was on her naval record of submission, even to far superior force, while it was filled with the tragic but heroic histories of commanders who had blown their ships, with every man on board, into the air, rather than strike their flag. Such was the character, and such the capacity of the sea-born republic.

That republic had serious and radical defects, but the design remained to be imitated and improved upon, centuries afterwards. The history of the rise and progress of the Dutch republic is a leading chapter in the history of human liberty.

The great misfortune of the commonwealth of the United Provinces, next to the slenderness of its geographical proportions, was the fact that it was without a centre and without a head, and therefore not a nation capable of unlimited vitality. There were seven states. Each claimed to be sovereign. The pretension on the part of several of them was ridiculous. Overyssel, for example, contributed two and three-quarters per cent. of the general budget. It was a swamp of twelve hundred square miles in extent, with some heath-spots interspered, and it numbered perhaps a hundred thousand inhabitants. The doughty Count of Embden alone could have swallowed up such sovereignty, have annexed all the buckwheat patches and cranberry marshes of Overyssel to his own meagre territories, and nobody the wiser.

Zeeland, as we have seen, was disposed at a critical moment to set up its independent sovereignty. Zeeland, far more important than Overyssel, had a revenue of perhaps five hundred thousand dollars,—rather a slender budget for an independent republic, wedged in as it was by the most powerful empires of the earth, and half drowned by the ocean, from which it had scarcely emerged.

There was therefore no popular representation, and on the other hand no executive head. As sovereignty must be exercised in some way, however, in all living commonwealths, and as a low degree of vitality was certainly not the defect of those bustling provinces, the supreme functions had now fallen into the hands of Holland.

While William the Silent lived, the management of war, foreign affairs, and finance, for the revolted provinces, was in his control. He was aided by two council boards, but the circumstances of history and the character of the man had invested him with an inevitable dictatorship.

After his death, at least after Leicester's time, the powers of the state-council, the head of which, Prince Maurice, was almost always absent at the wars, fell into comparative disuse. The great functions of the confederacy passed into the possession of the States-General. That body now came to sit permanently at the Hague. The number of its members, deputies from the seven provinces-envoys from those seven immortal and soulless sovereigns—was not large. The extraordinary assembly held at Bergen-op-Zoom for confirmation of the truce was estimated by, Bentivoglio at eight hundred. Bentivoglio, who was on the spot, being then nuncius at Brussels, ought to have been able to count them, yet it is very certain that the number was grossly exaggerated.

At any rate the usual assembly at the Hague rarely amounted to one hundred members. The presidency was changed once a week, the envoy of each province taking his turn as chairman.

Olden-Barneveld, as member for Holland, was always present in the diet. As Advocate-General of the leading province, and keeper of its great seal, more especially as possessor of the governing intellect of the whole commonwealth, he led the administration of Holland, and as the estates of Holland contributed more than half of the whole budget of the confederacy, it was a natural consequence of the actual supremacy of that province, and of the vast legal hand political experience of the Advocate, that Holland should, govern the confederacy, and that Barneveld should govern Holland.

The States-General remained virtually supreme, receiving envoys from all the great powers, sending abroad their diplomatic representatives, to whom the title and rank of ambassador was freely accorded, and dealing in a decorous and dignified way with all European affairs. The ability of the republican statesmen was as fully recognised all over the earth, as was the genius of their generals and great naval commanders.

The People did not exist; but this was merely because, in theory, the People had not been invented. It was exactly because there was a People—an energetic and intelligent People—that the republic was possible.

No scheme had yet been devised for laying down in primary assemblies a fundamental national law, for distributing the various functions of governmental power among selected servants, for appointing representatives according to population or property, and for holding all trustees responsible at reasonable intervals to the nation itself.

Thus government was involved, fold within fold, in successive and concentric municipal layers. The States-General were the outer husk, of which the separate town-council was the kernel or bulb. Yet the number of these executive and legislative boards was so large, and the whole population comparatively so slender, as to cause the original inconveniences from so incomplete a system to be rather theoretic than practical. In point of fact, almost as large a variety of individuals served the State as would perhaps have been the case under a more philosophically arranged democracy. The difficulty was rather in obtaining a candidate for the post than in distributing the posts among candidates.

Men were occupied with their own affairs. In proportion to their numbers, they were more productive of wealth than any other nation then existing. An excellent reason why the people were so, well governed, so productive, and so enterprising, was the simple fact that they were an educated people. There was hardly a Netherlander—man, woman, or child—that could not read and write. The school was the common property of the people, paid for among the municipal expenses. In the cities, as well as in the rural districts, there were not only common schools but classical schools. In the burgher families it was rare to find boys who had not been taught Latin, or girls unacquainted with French. Capacity to write and speak several modern languages was very common, and there were many individuals in every city, neither professors nor pedants, who had made remarkable progress in science and classical literature. The position, too, of women in the commonwealth proved a high degree of civilization. They are described as virtuous, well-educated, energetic, sovereigns in their households, and accustomed to direct all the business at home. "It would be ridiculous," said Donato, "to see a man occupying himself with domestic house-keeping. The women do it all, and command absolutely." The Hollanders, so rebellious against Church and King, accepted with meekness the despotism of woman.

The great movement of emancipation from political and ecclesiastical tyranny had brought with it a general advancement of the human intellect. The foundation of the Leyden university in memory of the heroism displayed by the burghers during the siege was as noble a monument as had ever been raised by a free people jealous of its fame. And the scientific lustre of the university well sustained the nobility of its origin. The proudest nation on earth might be more proud of a seat of learning, founded thus amidst carnage and tears, whence so much of profound learning and brilliant literature had already been diffused. The classical labours of Joseph Scaliger, Heinsius father and son the elder Dousa, almost as famous with his pen in Latin poetry as his sword had made him in the vernacular chronicle; of Dousa the son, whom Grotius called "the crown and flower of all good learning, too soon snatched away by envious death, than whom no man more skilled in poetry, more consummate in acquaintance with ancient science and literature, had ever lived;" of Hugo Grotius himself, who at the age of fifteen had taken his doctor's degree at Leyden who as a member of Olden-Barneveld's important legation to France and England very soon afterwards had excited the astonishment of Henry IV. and Elizabeth, who had already distinguished himself by editions of classic poets, and by original poems and dramas in Latin, and was already, although but twenty-six years of age; laying the foundation of that magnificent reputation as a jurist, a philosopher, a historian, and a statesman, which was to be one of the enduring glories of humanity, all these were the precious possessions of the high school of Leyden.

The still more modern university of Franeker, founded amid the din of perpetual warfare in Friesland, could at least boast the name of Arminius, whose theological writings and whose expansive views were destined to exert such influence over his contemporaries and posterity.

The great history of Hoofd, in which the splendid pictures and the impassioned drama of the great war of independence were to be preserved for his countrymen through all time, was not yet written. It was soon afterwards, however, to form not only a chief source of accurate information as to the great events themselves, but a model of style never since surpassed by any prose writer in either branch of the German tongue.

Had Hoofd written for a wider audience, it would be difficult to name a contemporary author of any nation whose work would have been more profoundly studied or more generally admired.

But the great war had not waited to be chronicled by the classic and impassioned Hoofd. Already there were thorough and exhaustive narrators of what was instinctively felt to be one of the most pregnant episodes of human history. Bor of Utrecht, a miracle of industry, of learning, of unwearied perseverance, was already engaged in the production of those vast folios in which nearly all the great transactions of the forty years' war were conscientiously portrayed, with a comprehensiveness of material and an impartiality of statement, such as might seem almost impossible for a contemporary writer. Immersed in attentive study and profound contemplation, he seemed to lift his tranquil head from time to time over the wild ocean of those troublous times, and to survey with accuracy without being swayed or appalled by the tempest. There was something almost sublime in his steady, unimpassioned gaze.

Emanuel van Meteren, too, a plain Protestant merchant of Antwerp and Amsterdam, wrote an admirable history of the war and of his own times, full of precious details, especially rich in statistics—a branch of science which he almost invented—which still, remains as one of the leading authorities, not only for scholars, but for the general reader.

Reyd and Burgundius, the one the Calvinist private secretary of Lewis William, the other a warm Catholic partisan, both made invaluable contemporaneous contributions to the history of the war.

The trophies already secured by the Netherlanders in every department of the fine arts, as well as the splendour which was to enrich the coming epoch, are too familiar to the world to need more than a passing allusion.

But it was especially in physical science that the republic was taking a leading part in the great intellectual march of the nations.

The very necessities of its geographical position had forced it to pre-eminence in hydraulics and hydrostatics. It had learned to transform water into dry land with a perfection attained by no nation before or since. The wonders of its submarine horticulture were the despair of all gardeners in the world.

And as in this gentlest of arts, so also in the dread science of war, the republic had been the instructor of mankind.

The youthful Maurice and his cousin Lewis William had so restored and improved the decayed intelligence of antique strategy, that the greybeards of Europe became docile pupils in their school. The mathematical teacher of Prince Maurice amazed the contemporary world with his combinations and mechanical inventions; the flying chariots of Simon Stevinua seeming products of magical art.

Yet the character of the Dutch intellect was averse to sorcery. The small but mighty nation, which had emancipated itself from the tyranny of Philip and of the Holy Inquisition, was foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition. Out of Holland came the first voice to rebuke one of the hideous delusions of the age. While grave magistrates and sages of other lands were exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims, John Wier, a physician of Grave, boldly denounced the demon which had taken possession, not of the wizards, but of the judges.

The age was lunatic and sick, and it was fitting that the race which had done so much for the physical and intellectual emancipation of the world, should have been the first to apply a remedy for this monstrous madness. Englishmen and their descendants were drowning and hanging witches in New England, long after John Wier had rebuked and denounced the belief in witchcraft.

It was a Zeelander, too; who placed the instrument in the hand of Galileo by which that daring genius traced the movements of the universe, and who, by another wondrous invention, enabled future discoverers to study the infinite life which lies all around us, hidden not by its remoteness but it's minuteness. Zacharias Jansens of Middelburg, in 1590, invented both the telescope and the microscope.

The wonder-man of Alkmaar, Cornelius Drebbel, who performed such astounding feats for the amusement of Rudolph of Germany and James of Britain, is also supposed to have invented the thermometer and the barometer. But this claim has been disputed. The inventions of Jansens are proved.

Willebrod Snellius, mathematical professor of Leyden, introduced the true method of measuring the degrees of longitude and latitude, and Huygens, who had seen his manuscripts, asserted that Snellius had invented, before Descartes, the doctrine of refraction.

But it was especially to that noble band of heroes and martyrs, the great navigators and geographical discoverers of the republic, that science is above all indebted.

Nothing is more sublime in human story than the endurance and audacity with which those pioneers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries confronted the nameless horrors of either pole, in the interests of commerce, and for the direct purpose of enlarging the bounds of the human intellect.

The achievements, the sufferings, and the triumphs of Barendz and Cordes, Heemskerk, Van der Hagen, and many others, have been slightly indicated in these pages. The contributions to botany, mineralogy, geometry, geography, and zoology, of Linschoten, Plancius, Wagenaar, and Houtmann, and so many other explorers of pole and tropic, can hardly be overrated.

The Netherlanders had wrung their original fatherland out of the grasp of the ocean. They had confronted for centuries the wrath of that ancient tyrant, ever ready to seize the prey of which he had been defrauded.

They had waged fiercer and more perpetual battle with a tyranny more cruel than the tempest, with an ancient superstition more hungry than the sea. It was inevitable that a race, thus invigorated by the ocean, cradled to freedom by their conflicts with its power, and hardened almost to invincibility by their struggle against human despotism, should be foremost among the nations in the development of political, religious, and commercial freedom.

The writer now takes an affectionate farewell of those who have followed him with an indulgent sympathy as he has attempted to trace the origin and the eventful course of the Dutch commonwealth. If by his labours a generous love has been fostered for that blessing, without which everything that this earth can afford is worthless—freedom of thought, of speech, and of life—his highest wish has been fulfilled. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

About equal to that of England at the same period An unjust God, himself the origin of sin Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion He often spoke of popular rights with contempt John Wier, a physician of Grave Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration) Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants So unconscious of her strength State can best defend religion by letting it alone Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent The People had not been invented The slightest theft was punished with the gallows Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated Toleration—that intolerable term of insult War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE 1600-09 UNITED NETHERLANDS:

A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction About equal to that of England at the same period Abstinence from unproductive consumption Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed Alas! we must always have something to persecute Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains All the ministers and great functionaries received presents An unjust God, himself the origin of sin Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins As if they were free will not make them free As neat a deception by telling the truth Because he had been successful (hated) Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand Bestowing upon others what was not his property Beware of a truce even more than of a peace But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended By turns, we all govern and are governed Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character Constitute themselves at once universal legatees Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling Could handle an argument as well as a sword Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader Despised those who were grateful Diplomacy of Spain and Rome—meant simply dissimulation Do you want peace or war? I am ready for either Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting Eloquence of the biggest guns England hated the Netherlands Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition Four weeks' holiday—the first in eleven years Friendly advice still more intolerable Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest God alone can protect us against those whom we trust God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice Gold was the only passkey to justice Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists Haereticis non servanda fides Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion He often spoke of popular rights with contempt He who confessed well was absolved well His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds) Humble ignorance as the safest creed Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains Indulging them frequently with oracular advice Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff It is certain that the English hate us (Sully) John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV. John Wier, a physician of Grave Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace Logic of the largest battalions Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference Made peace—and had been at war ever since Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign Men who meant what they said and said what they meant Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch Negotiated as if they were all immortal Night brings counsel No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I) Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration) Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable Prisoners were immediately hanged Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others Requires less mention than Philip III himself Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged So unconscious of her strength State can best defend religion by letting it alone Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent The art of ruling the world by doing nothing The slightest theft was punished with the gallows The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him The expenses of James's household The People had not been invented The small children diminished rapidly in numbers This obstinate little republic To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated Toleration—that intolerable term of insult Triple marriages between the respective nurseries Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious Unwise impatience for peace Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered War was the normal and natural condition of mankind War was the normal condition of Christians War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy When all was gone, they began to eat each other Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin You must show your teeth to the Spaniard



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS 1584-1609, COMPLETE

A hard bargain when both parties are losers A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so A free commonwealth—was thought an absurdity A burnt cat fears the fire A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed About equal to that of England at the same period Abstinence from unproductive consumption Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed Accustomed to the faded gallantries Act of Uniformity required Papists to assist Alas! we must always have something to persecute Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains Alexander's exuberant discretion All fellow-worms together All business has been transacted with open doors All Italy was in his hands All the ministers and great functionaries received presents Allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune An unjust God, himself the origin of sin Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins Arminianism Artillery As logical as men in their cups are prone to be As if they were free will not make them free As neat a deception by telling the truth As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition At length the twig was becoming the tree Auction sales of judicial ermine Baiting his hook a little to his appetite Beacons in the upward path of mankind Because he had been successful (hated) Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies Beneficent and charitable purposes (War) Bestowing upon others what was not his property Beware of a truce even more than of a peace Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards Burning of Servetus at Geneva But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended By turns, we all govern and are governed Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so Canker of a long peace Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as possibly might be" Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers Children who had never set foot on the shore Chronicle of events must not be anticipated College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character Condemned first and inquired upon after Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice Constant vigilance is the price of liberty Constitute themselves at once universal legatees Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling Could do a little more than what was possible Could handle an argument as well as a sword Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence Deal with his enemy as if sure to become his friend Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader Demanding peace and bread at any price Despised those who were grateful Diplomacy of Spain and Rome—meant simply dissimulation Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive Disciple of Simon Stevinus Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping Disposed to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel Divine right of kings Do you want peace or war? I am ready for either Done nothing so long as aught remained to do Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state During this, whole war, we have never seen the like Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting Eat their own children than to forego one high mass Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea of religious freedom Eloquence of the biggest guns England hated the Netherlands Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to cut each other's throats Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies Even to grant it slowly is to deny it utterly Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives the better Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims Faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect Famous fowl in every pot Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace Fitter to obey than to command Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty Fool who useth not wit because he hath it not For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured) For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future Forbidding the wearing of mourning at all Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition Four weeks' holiday—the first in eleven years French seem madmen, and are wise Friendly advice still more intolerable Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods German Highland and the German Netherland German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice God alone can protect us against those whom we trust God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather Gold was the only passkey to justice Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists Guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith Had industry been honoured instead of being despised Haereticis non servanda fides Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion Hard at work, pouring sand through their sieves Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors Hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning He often spoke of popular rights with contempt He did his work, but he had not his reward He who confessed well was absolved well He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep He sat a great while at a time. He had a genius for sitting Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.) Heretics to the English Church were persecuted Hibernian mode of expressing himself High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers Highest were not necessarily the least slimy His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies His insolence intolerable His inordinate arrogance Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence History is but made up of a few scattered fragments History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole Holy institution called the Inquisition Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors Hugo Grotius Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds) Humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war Humble ignorance as the safest creed Humility which was but the cloak to his pride Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree I will never live, to see the end of my poverty I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God I did never see any man behave himself as he did Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind Imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things Impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains In times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing Individuals walking in advance of their age Indulging them frequently with oracular advice Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes Innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers Inquisitors enough; but there were no light vessels in The Armada Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff Intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions Intolerable tendency to puns Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority Invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated It is certain that the English hate us (Sully) John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV. John Wier, a physician of Grave Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time King had issued a general repudiation of his debts King was often to be something much less or much worse Labour was esteemed dishonourable Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion Life of nations and which we call the Past Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe Logic of the largest battalions Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it Look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable Loving only the persons who flattered him Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Made peace—and had been at war ever since Magnificent hopefulness Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom Man had no rights at all He was property Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign Maritime heretics Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for Matters little by what name a government is called Meet around a green table except as fencers in the field Men who meant what they said and said what they meant Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity Mondragon was now ninety-two years old Moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped More catholic than the pope Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream Names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs National character, not the work of a few individuals Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man Necessity of kingship Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch Negotiated as if they were all immortal Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own Never did statesmen know better how not to do Never peace well made, he observed, without a mighty war New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style Night brings counsel Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts Not distinguished for their docility Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths Octogenarian was past work and past mischief Often necessary to be blind and deaf One-third of Philip's effective navy was thus destroyed One could neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I) Only citadel against a tyrant and a conqueror was distrust Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory Past was once the Present, and once the Future Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration) Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength Peace would be destruction Peace-at-any-price party Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable Philip II. gave the world work enough Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable Picturesqueness of crime Placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat Plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety Prisoners were immediately hanged Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work Proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother Rarely able to command, having never learned to obey Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties Rebuked him for his obedience Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation Religion was not to be changed like a shirt Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs" Repudiation of national debts was never heard of before Requires less mention than Philip III himself Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance Respect for differences in religious opinions Rich enough to be worth robbing Righteous to kill their own children Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns Sacked and drowned ten infant princes Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll Security is dangerous Seeking protection for and against the people Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous Seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology Self-assertion—the healthful but not engaging attribute Selling the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days Sentiment of Christian self-complacency Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom She relieth on a hope that will deceive her Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged Simple truth was highest skill Sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed Slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism) So unconscious of her strength Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad Some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth Spain was governed by an established terrorism Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen Sparing and war have no affinity together Stake or gallows (for) heretics to transubstantiation State can best defend religion by letting it alone States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride Strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend Succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation Such a crime as this had never been conceived (bankruptcy) Sure bind, sure find Sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent Tension now gave place to exhaustion That crowned criminal, Philip the Second That unholy trinity—Force; Dogma, and Ignorance The very word toleration was to sound like an insult The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels The expenses of James's household The worst were encouraged with their good success The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty The great ocean was but a Spanish lake The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals The sapling was to become the tree The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler) The record of our race is essentially unwritten The busy devil of petty economy The small children diminished rapidly in numbers The People had not been invented The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war The art of ruling the world by doing nothing The slightest theft was punished with the gallows The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him Their existence depended on war There are few inventions in morals There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness They chose to compel no man's conscience Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month) Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul This obstinate little republic Those who argue against a foregone conclusion Thought that all was too little for him Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany) Tis pity he is not an Englishman To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind Toleration—that intolerable term of insult Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children Tranquil insolence Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health Triple marriages between the respective nurseries Trust her sword, not her enemy's word Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics Under the name of religion (so many crimes) Undue anxiety for impartiality Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing Unwise impatience for peace Upon their knees, served the queen with wine Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency Use of the spade Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case Valour on the one side and discretion on the other Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures War was the normal and natural condition of mankind War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest War was the normal condition of Christians Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself We have the reputation of being a good housewife We must all die once We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity by an enormous fine Weapons Weary of place without power What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next When persons of merit suffer without cause When all was gone, they began to eat each other Whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue While one's friends urge moderation Who the "people" exactly were Whole revenue was pledged to pay the interest, on his debts Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have killed the bear With something of feline and feminine duplicity Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf Wrath of bigots on both sides Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly You must show your teeth to the Spaniard

THE END