stituents, on questions when the times demanded a
sudden decision, and when the necessary delay was inconvenient and
dangerous.

In religious matters, the States-party, to their honour, already leaned
to a wide toleration. Not only Catholics were not burned, but they were
not banished, and very large numbers remained in the territory, and were
quite undisturbed in religious matters, within their own doors. There
were even men employed in public affairs who were suspected of papistical
tendencies, although their hostility, to Spain and their attachment to
their native land could not fairly be disputed. The leaders of the
States-party had a rooted aversion to any political influence on the part
of the clergy of any denomination whatever. Disposed to be lenient to all
forms of worship, they were disinclined to an established church, but
still more opposed to allowing church-influence in secular affairs. As a
matter of course, political men with such bold views in religious matters
were bitterly assailed by their rigid opponents. Barneveld, with his "nil
scire tutissima fides," was denounced as a disguised Catholic or an
infidel, and as for Paul Buys, he was a "bolsterer of Papists, an
atheist, a devil," as it has long since been made manifest.

Nevertheless these men believed that they understood the spirit of their
country and of the age. In encouragement to an expanding commerce, the
elevation and education of the masses, the toleration of all creeds, and
a wide distribution of political functions and rights, they looked for
the salvation of their nascent republic from destruction, and the
maintenance of the true interests of the people. They were still loyal to
Queen Elizabeth, and desirous that she should accept the sovereignty of
the Provinces. But they were determined that the sovereignty should be a
constitutional one, founded upon and limited by the time-honoured laws
and traditions of their commonwealth; for they recognised the value of a
free republic with an hereditary chief, however anomalous it might in
theory appear. They knew that in Utrecht the Leicestrian party were about
to offer the Queen the sovereignty of their Province, without conditions,
but they were determined that neither Queen Elizabeth nor any other
monarch should ever reign in the Netherlands, except under conditions to
be very accurately defined and well secured.

Thus, contrasted, then, were the two great parties in the Netherlands, at
the