to give up
something which was not their property, the republic was voluntarily to
open its veins and drain its very life-blood at the bidding of a foreign
potentate. She was to fling away all the trophies of Heemskerk and Sebalt
de Weerd, of Balthasar de Cordes, Van der Hagen, Matelieff, and Verhoeff;
she was to abdicate the position which she had already acquired of
mistress of the seas, and she was to deprive herself for ever of that
daily increasing ocean commerce which was rapidly converting a cluster of
puny, half-submerged provinces into a mighty empire. Of a certainty the
Spanish court at this new epoch was an astounding anachronism. In its
view Pope Alexander VI. still lived and reigned.

Liberty was not a boon conferred upon the Netherlanders by their defeated
enemy. It had been gained by their own right hands; by the blood, and the
gold, and the sweat of two generations. If it were the king's to give,
let him try once more if he could take it away. Such were the opinions
and emotions of the Dutchmen, expressed in as courteous language as they
could find.

"It would be a political heresy," said Barneveld to the Spanish
commissioners at this session, "if my lords the States should by contract
banish their citizens out of two-thirds of the world, both land and sea."

"'Tis strange," replied the Spaniards, "that you wish to have more than
other powers--kings or republics--who never make any such pretensions.
The Indies, East and West, are our house, privately possessed by us for
more than a hundred years, and no one has a right to come into it without
our permission. This is not banishment, but a custom to which all other
nations submit. We give you your sovereignty before all the world,
quitting all claims upon it. We know very well that you deny receiving it
from us; but to give you a quit claim, and to permit free trade besides,
would be a little more than you have a right to expect."

Was it not well for the cause of liberty, commercial intercourse, and
advancement of the human intellect, that there was this obstinate little
republic in the world, refusing to tolerate that to which all other great
powers of the earth submitted; that there was one nation determined not
to acknowledge three-quarters of the world, including America and India,
as the private mansion of the King of Spain, to be locked against the
rest of the human race?

The next session of the negotiators after the arrival of this
communica