supremacy of the State over the Church, were
equally grave subjects. And the question of sovereignty now raised for
the first time, not academically merely, but practically, was the gravest
one of all. It was soon to be mooted vigorously and passionately whether
the United Provinces were a confederacy or a union; a league of sovereign
and independent states bound together by treaty for certain specified
purposes or an incorporated whole. The Advocate and all the principal
lawyers in the country had scarcely a doubt on the subject. Whether it
were a reasonable system or an absurd one, a vigorous or an imbecile form
of government, they were confident that the Union of Utrecht, made about
a generation of mankind before, and the only tie by which the Provinces
were bound together at all, was a compact between sovereigns.

Barneveld styled himself always the servant and officer of the States of
Holland. To them was his allegiance, for them he spoke, wrought, and
thought, by them his meagre salary was paid. At the congress of the
States-General, the scene of his most important functions, he was the
ambassador of Holland, acting nominally according to their instructions,
and exercising the powers of minister of foreign affairs and, as it were,
prime minister for the other confederates by their common consent. The
system would have been intolerable, the great affairs of war and peace
could never have been carried on so triumphantly, had not the
preponderance of the one province Holland, richer, more powerful, more
important in every way than the other six provinces combined, given to
the confederacy illegally, but virtually, many of the attributes of
union. Rather by usucaption than usurpation Holland had in many regards
come to consider herself and be considered as the Republic itself. And
Barneveld, acting always in the name of Holland and with the most modest
of titles and appointments, was for a long time in all civil matters the
chief of the whole country. This had been convenient during the war,
still more convenient during negotiations for peace, but it was
inevitable that there should be murmurs now that the cessation from
military operations on a large scale had given men time to look more
deeply into the nature of a constitution partly inherited and partly
improvised, and having many of the defects usually incident to both
sources of government.

The military interest, the ecclesiastical power, and the influence of