the transaction. He declared however that the money was a
reward for public services rendered by him to the French Government ten
years before, in the course of his mission to France at the time of the
peace of Vervins. The reward had been promised in 1598, and the pledge
was fulfilled in 1608. In accepting wages fairly earned, however, he
protested that he had bound himself to no dishonourable service, and that
he had never exchanged a word with Jeannin or with any man in regard to
securing for Henry the sovereignty of the Netherlands.

His friends moreover maintained in his defence that there were no laws in
the Netherlands forbidding citizens to accept presents or pensions from
foreign powers. Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation. Woe to the
republic whose citizens require laws to prevent them from becoming
stipendiaries of foreign potentates! If public virtue, the only
foundation of republican institutions, be so far washed away that laws in
this regard are necessary to save it from complete destruction, then
already the republic is impossible. Many who bore illustrious names, and
occupied the highest social positions at, that day in France, England,
and the obedient provinces, were as venal as cattle at a fair. Philip and
Henry had bought them over and over again, whenever either was rich
enough to purchase and strong enough to enforce the terms of sale. Bribes
were taken with both hands in overflowing measure; the difficulty was
only in obtaining the work for the wage.

But it would have been humiliating beyond expression had the new
commonwealth, after passing through the fiery furnace of its great war,
proved no purer than leading monarchies at a most corrupt epoch. It was
no wonder therefore that men sought to wipe off the stain from the
reputation of Barneveld, and it is at least a solace that there was no
proof of his ever rendering, or ever having agreed to render, services
inconsistent with his convictions as to the best interests of the
commonwealth. It is sufficiently grave that he knew the colour of the
king's money, and that in a momentous crisis of history he accepted a
reward for former professional services, and that the broker in the
transaction, President Jeannin, seriously charged him by Henry's orders
to keep the matter secret. It would be still more dismal if Jeannin, in
his private letters, had ever intimated to Villeroy or his master that he
considered it a mercantile transaction, or i