recht, and Overyssel, protested against the vote as an
outrageous invasion of the rights of each province, as an act of flagrant
tyranny and usurpation.

The minority in the States of Holland, the five cities often named,
protested against the protest.

The defective part of the Netherland constitutions could not be better
illustrated. The minority of the States of Holland refused to be bound by
a majority of the provincial assembly. The minority of the States-General
refused to be bound by the majority of the united assembly.

This was reducing politics to an absurdity and making all government
impossible. It is however quite certain that in the municipal governments
a majority had always governed, and that a majority vote in the
provincial assemblies had always prevailed. The present innovation was to
govern the States-General by a majority.

Yet viewed by the light of experience and of common sense, it would be
difficult to conceive of a more preposterous proceeding than thus to cram
a religious creed down the throats of half the population of a country by
the vote of a political assembly. But it was the seventeenth and not the
nineteenth century.

Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union,
reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each
province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such
tyranny.

When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were
drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three
states left the chamber. A solitary individual from Holland remained
however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.

Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him
to accept the vote. Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be
possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle
matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long
controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.

"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the
Advocate very sharply, "I am not."

Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the
stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.

But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.
His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office,
his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.

Shallow observers considered the struggle