arly interesting,
because it was a revolt not merely against the Inquisition, but also
against the temporal sovereignty of Philip. Besides changing their
religion, the sturdy Netherlanders saw fit to throw off the sway of
their legitimate ruler, and to proclaim the thrice heretical doctrine
of the sovereignty of the people. In this one respect their views were
decidedly more modern than those of Elizabeth and Henry IV. These great
monarchs apparently neither understood nor relished the republican
theories of the Hollanders; though it is hardly necessary for Mr. Motley
to sneer at them quite so often because they were not to an impossible
degree in advance of their age. The proclamation of a republic in the
Netherlands marked of itself the beginning of a new era,--an era when
flourishing communities of men were no longer to be bought and sold,
transferred and bequeathed like real estate and chattels, but were to
have and maintain the right of choosing with whom and under whom they
should transact their affairs. The interminable negotiations for a
truce, which fill nearly one third of Mr. Motley's concluding volume,
exhibit with striking distinctness the difference between the old and
new points of view. Here again we think Mr. Motley errs slightly, in
calling too much attention to the prevaricating diplomacy of the Spanish
court, and too little to its manifest inability to comprehend the
demands of the Netherlanders. How should statesmen brought up under
Philip II. and kept under the eye of the Inquisition be expected to
understand a claim for liberty originating in the rights of the common
people and not in the gracious benevolence or intelligent policy of the
King? The very idea must have been practically inconceivable by them.
Accordingly, they strove by every available device of chicanery to
wheedle the Netherlanders into accepting their independence as a gift
from the King of Spain. But to such a piece of self-stultification the
clear-sighted Dutchmen could by no persuasion be brought to consent.
Their independence, they argued, was not the King's to give. They had
won it from him and his father, in a war of forty years, during which
they had suffered atrocious miseries, and all that the King of Spain
could do was to acknowledge it as their right, and cease to molest them
in future. Over this point, so simple to us but knotty enough in those
days, the commissioners wrangled for nearly two years. And when the
Spanish