is part if the name and dignity of stadholder
should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign
Prince.

Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the
Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.

The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it
ever received a formal baptism. So undefined was its constitution, and so
conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men,
that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed
against it. Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the
sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that
sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of
war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution,
any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had
now begun to claim it as a right. The Republic was neither venerable by
age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers,
manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and
exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have
achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of
Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to that name.

Thus a bitter conflict was rapidly developing itself in the heart of the
Commonwealth. There was the civil element struggling with the military
for predominance; sword against gown; states' rights against central
authority; peace against war; above all the rivalry of one prominent
personage against another, whose mutual hatred was now artfully inflamed
by partisans.

And now another element of discord had come, more potent than all the
rest: the terrible, never ending, struggle of Church against State.
Theological hatred which forty years long had found vent in the exchange
of acrimony between the ancient and the Reformed churches was now
assuming other shapes. Religion in that age and country was more than has
often been the case in history the atmosphere of men's daily lives. But
during the great war for independence, although the hostility between the
two religious forces was always intense, it was modified especially
towards the close of the struggle by other controlling influences. The
love of independence and the passion for nationality, the devotion to
ancient political privileges, was often as fervid and genuin