ad the day for
profound investigation of the political or social contract arrived. Men
dealt almost exclusively with facts, and when the facts arranged
themselves illogically and incoherently the mischief was grave and
difficult to remedy. It is not a trifling inconvenience for an organized
commonwealth to be in doubt as to where, in whom, and of what nature is
its sovereignty. Yet this was precisely the condition of the United
Netherlands. To the eternal world so dazzling were the reputation and the
achievements of their great captain that he was looked upon by many as
the legitimate chief of the state and doubtless friendly monarchs would
have cordially welcomed him into their brotherhood.

During the war he had been surrounded by almost royal state. Two hundred
officers lived daily at his table. Great nobles and scions of sovereign
houses were his pupils or satellites. The splendour of military despotism
and the awe inspired by his unquestioned supremacy in what was deemed the
greatest of all sciences invested the person of Maurice of Nassau with a
grandeur which many a crowned potentate might envy. His ample
appointments united with the spoils of war provided him with almost royal
revenues, even before the death of his elder brother Philip William had
placed in his hands the principality and wealthy possessions of Orange.
Hating contradiction, arbitrary by instinct and by military habit,
impatient of criticism, and having long acknowledged no master in the
chief business of state, he found himself at the conclusion of the truce
with his great occupation gone, and, although generously provided for by
the treasury of the Republic, yet with an income proportionately limited.

Politics and theology were fields in which he had hardly served an
apprenticeship, and it was possible that when he should step forward as a
master in those complicated and difficult pursuits, soon to absorb the
attention of the Commonwealth and the world, it might appear that war was
not the only science that required serious preliminary studies.

Meantime he found himself not a king, not the master of a nominal
republic, but the servant of the States-General, and the limited
stadholder of five out of seven separate provinces.

And the States-General were virtually John of Barneveld. Could antagonism
be more sharply defined? Jealousy, that potent principle which controls
the regular movements and accounts for the aberrations of humanity in
wid