s from the worst effects of
its foreign foes.

William of Nassau has been accused of having at length urged
on the stadtholderess to promulgate the final edicts and the
resolutions of the Council of Trent, and then retiring from the
council of state. This line of conduct may be safely admitted and
fairly defended by his admirers. He had seen the uselessness of
remonstrance against the intentions of the king. Every possible
means had been tried, without effect, to soften his pitiless
heart to the sufferings of the country. At length the moment
came when the people had reached that pitch of despair which is
the great force of the oppressed, and William felt that their
strength was now equal to the contest he had long foreseen. It
is therefore absurd to accuse him of artifice in the exercise of
that wisdom which rarely failed him on any important crisis. A
change of circumstances gives a new name to actions and motives;
and it would be hard to blame William of Nassau for the only point
in which he bore the least resemblance to Philip of Spain--that
depth of penetration, which the latter turned to every base and
the former to every noble purpose.

Up to the present moment the Prince of Orange and the Counts
Egmont and Horn, with their partisans and friends, had sincerely
desired the public peace, and acted in the common interest of
the king and the people. But all the nobles had not acted with
the same constitutional moderation. Many of those, disappointed
on personal accounts, others professing the new doctrines, and
the rest variously affected by manifold motives, formed a body
of violent and sometimes of imprudent malcontents. The marriage
of Alexander, prince of Parma, son of the stadtholderess, which
was at this time celebrated at Brussels, brought together an
immense number of these dissatisfied nobles, who became thus drawn
into closer connection, and whose national candor was more than
usually brought out in the confidential intercourse of society.
Politics and patriotism were the common subjects of conversation
in the various convivial meetings that took place. Two German
nobles, Counts Holle and Schwarzemberg, at that period in the
Netherlands, loudly proclaimed the favorable disposition of the
princes of the empire toward the Belgians. It was supposed even
thus early that negotiations had been opened with several of
those sovereigns. In short, nothing seemed wanting but a leader,
to give consistency and weig