, each again claiming
something very like sovereignty for itself--could not fail to be
manifested whenever, great negotiations with foreign powers were to be
undertaken. To obtain the unanimous consent of seven independent little
republics was a work of difficulty, requiring immense expenditure of time
in comparatively unimportant contingencies. How intolerable might become
the obstructions, the dissensions, and the delays, now that a series of
momentous and world-wide transactions was beginning, on the issue of
which the admission of a new commonwealth into the family of nations, the
international connections of all the great powers of Christendom, the
commerce of the world, and the peace of Europe depended.

Yet there was no help for it but to make the best present use of the
institutions which time and great events had bestowed upon the young
republic, leaving to a more convenient season the task of remodelling the
law. Meanwhile, with men who knew their own minds, who meant to speak the
truth, and who were resolved to gather in at last the harvest honestly
and bravely gained by nearly a half-century of hard fighting, it would be
hard for a legion of friars, with their heads full of quirks and their
wallets full of bills of exchange, to carry the day for despotism.

Barneveld was sincerely desirous of peace. He was well aware that his
province of Holland, where he was an intellectual autocrat, was
staggering under the burden of one half the expenses of the whole
republic. He knew that Holland in the course of the last nine years,
notwithstanding the constantly heightened rate of impost on all objects
of ordinary consumption, was twenty-six millions of florins behindhand,
and that she had reason therefore to wish for peace. The great Advocate,
than whom no statesman in Europe could more accurately scan the world's
horizon, was convinced that the propitious moment for honourable
straightforward negotiations to secure peace, independence, and free
commerce, free religion and free government, had come, and he had
succeeded in winning the reluctant Maurice into a partial adoption, at
least, of his opinions.

The Franciscan remained at Delft, waiting, by direction of the States,
for an answer to his propositions, and doing his best according to the
instructions of his own Government to espy the condition and sentiments
of the enemy. Becoming anxious after the lapse of a fortnight, he wrote
to Barneveld. In reply the Advo