romise was in its origin, a
covenant of nobles. It was directed against the foreign influence by
which the Netherlands were exclusively governed, and against the
inquisition, whether papal, episcopal, or by edict. There is no doubt
that the country was controlled entirely by Spanish masters, and that the
intention was to reduce the ancient liberty of the Netherlands into
subjection to a junta of foreigners sitting at Madrid. Nothing more
legitimate could be imagined than a constitutional resistance to such a
policy.

The Prince of Orange had not been consulted as to the formation of the
league. It was sufficiently obvious to its founders that his cautious
mind would find much to censure in the movement. His sentiments with
regard to the inquisition and the edicts were certainly known to all men.
In the beginning of this year, too, he had addressed a remarkable letter
to the Duchess, in answer to her written commands to cause the Council of
Trent, the inquisition, and the edicts, in accordance with the recent
commands of the King, to be published and enforced throughout his
government. Although his advice on the subject had not been asked, he
expressed his sense of obligation to speak his mind on the subject,
preferring the hazard of being censured for his remonstrance, to that of
incurring the suspicion of connivance at the desolation of the land by
his silence. He left the question of reformation in ecclesiastical morals
untouched, as not belonging to his vocation: As to the inquisition, he
most distinctly informed her highness that the hope which still lingered
in the popular mind of escaping the permanent establishment of that
institution, had alone prevented the utter depopulation of the country,
with entire subversion of its commercial and manufacturing industry. With
regard to the edicts, he temperately but forcibly expressed the opinion
that it was very hard to enforce those placards now in their rigor, when
the people were exasperated, and the misery universal, inasmuch as they
had frequently been modified on former occasions. The King, he said,
could gain nothing but difficulty for himself, and would be sure to lose
the affection of his subjects by renewing the edicts, strengthening the
inquisition, and proceeding to fresh executions, at a time when the
people, moved by the example of their neighbors, were naturally inclined
to novelty. Moreover, when by reason of the daily increasing prices of
grain a famine w