e on municipal law; it is certain that, if it did, the boasted
liberties of the Netherlands were a dream; but it is equally true that,
in the circumstances then existing, a vulgar, cowardly, or incompetent
personage might have marked his pathway with massacres without restoring
tranquillity.

Sometimes there was even a comic aspect to these strokes of state. The
lists of new magistrates being hurriedly furnished by the Prince's
adherents to supply the place of those evicted, it often happened that
men not quahified by property, residence, or other attributes were
appointed to the government, so that many became magistrates before they
were citizens.

On being respectfully asked sometimes who such a magistrate might be
whose face and name were equally unknown to his colleagues and to the
townsmen in general; "Do I know the fellows?" he would say with a
cheerful laugh. And indeed they might have all been dead men, those new
functionaries, for aught he did know. And so on through Medemblik and
Alkmaar, Brielle, Delft, Monnikendam, and many other cities progressed
the Prince, sowing new municipalities broadcast as he passed along. At
the Hague on his return a vote of thanks to the Prince was passed by the
nobles and most of the cities for the trouble he had taken in this
reforming process. But the unanimous vote had not yet been secured, the
strongholds of Arminianism, as it was the fashion to call them, not being
yet reduced.

The Prince, in reply to the vote of thanks, said that "in what he had
done and was going to do his intention sincerely and uprightly had been
no other than to promote the interests and tranquillity of the country,
without admixture of anything personal and without prejudice to the
general commonwealth or the laws and privileges of the cities." He
desired further that "note might be taken of this declaration as record
of his good and upright intentions."

But the sincerest and most upright intentions may be refracted by party
atmosphere from their aim, and the purest gold from the mint elude the
direct grasp through the clearest fluid in existence. At any rate it
would have been difficult to convince the host of deposed magistrates
hurled from office, although recognized as faithful servants of the
Fatherland, that such violent removal had taken place without detriment
to the laws and privileges.

And the Stadholder went to the few cities where some of the leaven still
lingered.

He arrived at