its contents, was at once sent by order of the Advocate,
under guidance of Commissary John Spronsen, to the Receiver-General of
the republic.

Yet men wagged their beards dismally as they whispered this fresh proof
of Barneveld's venality. As if Spinola and his colleagues were such
blunderers in bribing as to send bushel baskets full of Spanish dollars
on a sledge, in broad daylight, to the house of a great statesman whom
they meant to purchase, expecting doubtless a receipt in full to be
brought back by the drayman! Well might the Advocate say at a later
moment, in the bitterness of his spirit, that his enemies, not satisfied
with piercing his heart with their false, injurious and honour-filching
libels and stories, were determined to break it. "He begged God
Almighty," he said, "to be merciful to him, and to judge righteously
between him and them."

Party spirit has rarely run higher in any commonwealth than in Holland
during these memorable debates concerning a truce. Yet the leaders both
of the war party and the truce party were doubtless pure, determined
patriots, seeking their country's good with all their souls and strength.

Maurice answered the discourse of Jeannin by a second and very elaborate
letter. In this circular, addressed to the magistracies of Holland, he
urged his countrymen once more with arguments already employed by him,
and in more strenuous language than ever, to beware of a truce even more
than of a peace, and warned them not to swerve by a hair's breadth from
the formula in regard to the sovereignty agreed upon at the very
beginning of the negotiations. To this document was appended a paper of
considerations, drawn up by Maurice and Lewis William, in refutation,
point by point, of all the arguments of President Jeannin in his late
discourse.

It is not necessary to do more than allude to these documents, which were
marked by the close reasoning and fiery spirit which characterized all
the appeals of the prince and his cousin at this period, because the time
had now come which comes to all controversies when argument is exhausted
and either action or compromise begins.

Meantime, Barneveld, stung almost to madness by the poisonous though
ephemeral libels which buzzed so perpetually about him, had at last
resolved to retire from the public service. He had been so steadily
denounced as being burthensome to his superiors in birth by the power
which he had acquired, and to have shot up so far