tle doubt that no other theory was tenable. If
so powerful a mind as that of the Advocate was inclined to strain the
theory to its extreme limits, it was because in the overshadowing
superiority of the one province Holland had been found the practical
remedy for the imbecility otherwise sure to result from such provincial
and meagre federalism.

Moreover, to obtain Union by stretching all the ancient historical
privileges and liberties of the separate provinces upon the Procrustean
bed of a single dogma, to look for nationality only in common subjection
to an infallible priesthood, to accept a Catechism as the palladium upon
which the safety of the State was to depend for all time, and beyond
which there was to be no further message from Heaven--such was not
healthy constitutionalism in the eyes of a great statesman. No doubt that
without the fervent spirit of Calvinism it would have been difficult to
wage war with such immortal hate as the Netherlands had waged it, no
doubt the spirit of republican and even democratic liberty lay hidden
within that rigid husk, but it was dishonour to the martyrs who had died
by thousands at the stake and on the battle field for the rights of
conscience if the only result of their mighty warfare against wrong had
been to substitute a new dogma for an old one, to stifle for ever the
right of free enquiry, theological criticism, and the hope of further
light from on high, and to proclaim it a libel on the Republic that
within its borders all heretics, whether Arminian or Papist, were safe
from the death penalty or even from bodily punishment. A theological
union instead of a national one and obtained too at the sacrifice of
written law and immemorial tradition, a congress in which clerical
deputations from all the provinces and from foreign nations should
prescribe to all Netherlanders an immutable creed and a shadowy
constitution, were not the true remedies for the evils of confederacy,
nor, if they had been, was the time an appropriate one for their
application.

It was far too early in the world's history to hope for such
redistribution of powers and such a modification of the social compact as
would place in separate spheres the Church and the State, double the
sanctions and the consolations of religion by removing it from the
pollutions of political warfare, and give freedom to individual
conscience by securing it from the interference of government.

It is melancholy to see the R