uld not have been outraged more utterly.
Every constitutional and natural right was violated from first to last.
This certainly was not a novelty. Thousands of obscure individuals, whose
relations and friends were not upon thrones and in high places, but in
booths and cellars, and whose fate therefore did not send a shudder of
sympathy throughout Europe, had already been sacrificed by the Blood
tribunal. Still this great case presented a colossal emblem of the
condition in which the Netherlands were now gasping. It was a monumental
exhibition of the truth which thousands had already learned to their
cost, that law and justice were abrogated throughout the land. The
country was simply under martial law--the entire population under
sentence of death. The whole civil power was in Alva's hand; the whole
responsibility in Alva's breast. Neither the most ignoble nor the most
powerful could lift their heads in the sublime desolation which was
sweeping the country. This was now proved beyond peradventure. A
miserable cobbler or weaver might be hurried from his shop to the
scaffold, invoking the 'jus de non evocando' till he was gagged, but the
Emperor would not stoop from his throne, nor electors palatine and
powerful nobles rush to his rescue; but in behalf of these prisoners the
most august hands and voices of Christendom had been lifted up at the
foot of Philip's throne; and their supplications had proved as idle as
the millions of tears and death-cries which had beep shed or uttered in
the lowly places of the land. It was obvious; then, that all intercession
must thereafter be useless. Philip was fanatically impressed with his
mission. His viceroy was possessed by his loyalty as by a demon. In this
way alone, that conduct which can never be palliated may at least be
comprehended. It was Philip's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of God
against heretics. It was Alva's enthusiasm to embody the wrath of Philip.
Narrow-minded, isolated, seeing only that section of the world which was
visible through the loop-hole of the fortress in which Nature had
imprisoned him for life, placing his glory in unconditional obedience to
his superior, questioning nothing, doubting nothing, fearing nothing, the
viceroy accomplished his work of hell with all the tranquillity of an
angel. An iron will, which clove through every obstacle; adamantine
fortitude, which sustained without flinching a mountain of responsibility
sufficient to crush a common nat