nd, what good
could it do to the cause of peace, that these wonderful instructions
should be published throughout the republic? They might almost seem a
fiction, invented by the war party to inspire a general disgust for any
further negotiation. Every loyal Netherlander would necessarily be
qualmish at the word peace, now that the whole design of the Spanish
party was disclosed.

The public exercise of the Roman religion was now known to be the
indispensable condition--first, last, and always--to any possible peace.
Every citizen of the republic was to be whipped out of the East and West
Indies, should he dare to show his face in those regions. The
States-General, while swallowing the crumb of sovereignty vouchsafed by
the archdukes, were to accept them as protectors, in order not to fall a
prey to the enemies whom they imagined to be their friends.

What could be more hopeless than such negotiations? What more dreary than
the perpetual efforts of two lines to approach each other which were
mathematically incapable of meeting? That the young republic, conscious
of her daily growing strength, should now seek refuge from her nobly won
independence in the protectorate of Albert, who was himself the vassal of
Philip, was an idea almost inconceivable to the Dutch mind. Yet so
impossible was it for the archdukes to put themselves into human
relations with this new and popular Government, that in the inmost
recesses of their breasts they actually believed themselves, when making
the offer, to be performing a noble act of Christian charity.

The efforts of Jeannin and of the English ambassador were now
unremitting, and thoroughly seconded by Barneveld. Maurice was almost at
daggers drawn, not only with the Advocate but with the foreign envoys.
Sir Ralph Winwood, who had, in virtue of the old treaty arrangements with
England, a seat in the state-council at the Hague, and who was a man of a
somewhat rough and insolent deportment, took occasion at a session of
that body, when the prince was present, to urge the necessity of at once
resuming the ruptured negotiations. The King of Great Britain; he said,
only recommended a course which he was himself always ready to pursue.
Hostilities which were necessary, and no others, were just. Such, and
such only, could be favoured by God or by pious kings. But wars were not
necessary which could be honourably avoided. A truce was not to be
despised, by which religious liberty and commerce w