n reached its extreme
point. Not only were there seven republics, but each town asserted
sovereign rights, defying at times the authority of the majority in the
Provincial Estates. This was especially seen in the predominant
province of Holland, where the city of Amsterdam by its wealth and
importance was able to dictate its will to the Estates, and through the
Estates to the States-General. Money-making and trade profits were the
matters which engrossed everybody's interest. War interfered with trade;
it was costly, and was to be avoided at any price. During this time the
policy of the Republic was neutrality; and the States-General, with
their army and navy reduced more and more in numbers and efficiency,
scarcely counted in the calculations of the cabinets of Europe.

But this very time that was marked by the decline and fall of the
Republic from the high position which it occupied during the greater
part of the 17th century, was the golden age of the burgher-oligarchies.
A haughty "patrician" class, consisting in each place of a very limited
number of families, closely inter-related, had little by little
possessed themselves, as a matter of hereditary right, of all the
offices and dignities in the town, in the province and in the state.
Within their own town they reigned supreme, filling up vacancies in the
_vroedschap_ by co-option, exercising all authority, occupying or
distributing among their relatives all posts of profit, and acquiring
great wealth. Their fellow-citizens were excluded from all share in
affairs, and were looked down upon as belonging to an inferior caste.
The old simple habits of their forefathers were abandoned. French
fashions and manners were the vogue amongst them, and English clothes,
furniture and food. In the country--_platteland_--people had no voice
whatever in public affairs; they were not even represented, as the
ordinary townspeople were by their regents. Thus the United Netherlands
had not only ceased to be a unified state in any real sense of the word,
but had ceased likewise to be a free state. It consisted of a large
number of semi-independent oligarchies of the narrowest description;
and the great mass of its population was deprived of every vestige of
civic rights.

That such a State should have survived at all is to be explained by the
fact that the real control over the foreign policy of the Republic and
over its general government continued to be exercised by the band of
e