Tyckelaer was the person thus chosen;
but that, horrified at the bare idea of the act which he was asked to
perpetrate, he had preferred rather to reveal the crime than to commit
it.

This disclosure was, indeed, well calculated to call forth a furious
outbreak among the Orange faction. The Attorney General caused, on the
16th of August, 1672, Cornelius de Witt to be arrested; and the noble
brother of John de Witt had, like the vilest criminal, to undergo, in
one of the apartments of the town prison, the preparatory degrees of
torture, by means of which his judges expected to force from him the
confession of his alleged plot against William of Orange.

But Cornelius was not only possessed of a great mind, but also of a
great heart. He belonged to that race of martyrs who, indissolubly
wedded to their political convictions as their ancestors were to their
faith, are able to smile on pain: while being stretched on the rack, he
recited with a firm voice, and scanning the lines according to measure,
the first strophe of the "Justum ac tenacem" of Horace, and, making no
confession, tired not only the strength, but even the fanaticism, of his
executioners.

The judges, notwithstanding, acquitted Tyckelaer from every charge; at
the same time sentencing Cornelius to be deposed from all his offices
and dignities; to pay all the costs of the trial; and to be banished
from the soil of the Republic for ever.

This judgment against not only an innocent, but also a great man,
was indeed some gratification to the passions of the people, to whose
interests Cornelius de Witt had always devoted himself: but, as we shall
soon see, it was not enough.

The Athenians, who indeed have left behind them a pretty tolerable
reputation for ingratitude, have in this respect to yield precedence to
the Dutch. They, at least in the case of Aristides, contented themselves
with banishing him.

John de Witt, at the first intimation of the charge brought against his
brother, had resigned his office of Grand Pensionary. He too received
a noble recompense for his devotedness to the best interests of his
country, taking with him into the retirement of private life the
hatred of a host of enemies, and the fresh scars of wounds inflicted by
assassins, only too often the sole guerdon obtained by honest people,
who are guilty of having worked for their country, and of having
forgotten their own private interests.

In the meanwhile William of Orange urg