ur
ancestors in similar negotiations always feared, and against which we too
have always done our best to guard ourselves.

"Wherefore, if the preservation of our beloved fatherland is dear to you,
I exhort you to maintain that great fundamental resolution, at all times
and against all men, even if this should cause the departure of the
enemy's commissioners. What can you expect from them but evil fruit?"

He then advised all the estates and magistracies which he was addressing
to instruct their deputies, at the approaching session of the
States-General, to hold on to the first article of the often-cited
preliminary resolution without allowing one syllable to be altered.
Otherwise nothing could save the commonwealth from dire and notorious
confusion. Above all, he entreated them to act in entire harmony and
confidence with himself and his cousin, even as they had ever done with
his illustrious father.

Certainly the prince fully deserved the confidence of the States, as well
for his own signal services and chivalrous self-devotion, as for the
unexampled sacrifices and achievements of William the Silent. His words
had the true patriotic ring of his father's frequent and eloquent
appeals; and I have not hesitated to give these extracts from his
discourse, because comparatively few of such utterances of Maurice have
been preserved, and because it gives a vivid impression of the condition
of the republic and the state of parties at that momentous epoch. It was
not merely the fate of the United Netherlands and the question of peace
or war between the little republic and its hereditary enemy that were
upon the issue. The peace of all Christendom, the most considerable
material interests of civilization, and the highest political and moral
principles that can influence human action, were involved in those
negotiations.

There were not wanting many to impeach the purity of the stadholder's
motives. As admiral or captain-general, he received high salaries,
besides a tenth part of all prize-money gained at sea by the fleets, or
of ransom and blackmail on land by the armies of the republic. His
profession, his ambition, his delights, were those of a soldier. As a
soldier in a great war, he was more necessary to his countrymen than he
could expect to be as a statesman in time of peace. But nothing ever
appeared in public or in private, which threw a reasonable suspicion upon
his lofty patriotism. Peace he had always believed to