re, as Aerssens, with just bitterness,
exclaimed.

Two days were passed at the Hague in vehement debate. The deputies of
Zeeland withdrew. The deputies from Holland were divided, but, on the
whole, it was agreed to listen to propositions of truce, provided the
freedom of the United Provinces--not under conditions nor during a
certain period, but simply and for all time--should be recognised
beforehand.

It was further decided on the 14th September to wait until the end of the
month for the answer from Spain.

After the 1st of October it was distinctly intimated to the Spanish
commissioners that they must at once leave the country unless the king
had then acknowledged the absolute independence of the provinces.

A suggestion which had been made by these diplomatists to prolong the
actually existing armistice into a truce of seven years, a step which
they professed themselves willing to take upon their own responsibility,
had been scornfully rejected by the States. It was already carrying them
far enough away, they said, to take them away from a peace to a truce,
which was something far less secure than a peace, but the continuance of
this floating, uncertain armistice would be the most dangerous insecurity
of all. This would be going from firm land to slippery ice, and from
slippery ice into the water. By such a process, they would have neither
war nor peace--neither liberty of government nor freedom of commerce--and
they unanimously refused to listen to any such schemes.

During the fortnight which followed this provisional consent of the
States, the prince redoubled his efforts to counteract the Barneveld
party.

He was determined, so far as in him lay, that the United Netherlands
should never fall back under the dominion of Spain. He had long
maintained the impossibility of effecting their thorough independence
except by continuing the war, and had only with reluctance acquiesced in
the arguments of the French ambassadors in favour of peace negotiations.
As to the truce, he vehemently assured those envoys that it was but a
trap. How could the Netherlanders know who their friends might be when
the truce should have expired, and under what unfavourable auspices they
might not be compelled to resume hostilities?

As if he had been actually present at the council boards in Madrid and
Valladolid, or had been reading the secret letters of Friar John to
Spinola, he affirmed that the only object of Spain was to recrui