of conscience; a thing was just so soon as it became his duty; he
belonged to those honest men who are indispensable to bad ones; fraud
reckoned on his honesty. Half a century later he would have received
his immortality from the freedom which he now helped to subvert.
In the privy council at Brussels he was the servant of tyranny; in the
parliament in London, or in the senate at Amsterdam, he would have died,
perhaps, like Thomas More or Olden Barneveldt.

In the Count Barlaimont, the president of the council of finance,
the opposition had a no less formidable antagonist than in Viglius.
Historians have transmitted but little information regarding the
services and the opinions of this man. In the first part of his career
the dazzling greatness of Cardinal Granvella seems to have cast a shade
over him; after the latter had disappeared from the stage the
superiority of the opposite party kept him down, but still the little
that we do find respecting him throws a favorable light over his
character. More than once the Prince of Orange exerted himself to
detach him from the interests of the cardinal, and to join him to his
own party--sufficient proof that he placed a value on the prize. All
his efforts failed, which shows that he had to do with no vacillating
character. More than once we see him alone, of all the members of the
council, stepping forward to oppose the dominant faction, and protecting
against universal opposition the interests of the crown, which were in
momentary peril of being sacrificed. When the Prince of Orange had
assembled the knights of the Golden Fleece in his own palace, with a
view to induce them to come to a preparatory resolution for the
abolition of the Inquisition, Barlaimont was the first to denounce the
illegality of this proceeding and to inform the regent of it. Some time
after the prince asked him if the regent knew of that assembly, and
Barlaitnont hesitated not a moment to avow to him the truth. All the
steps which have been ascribed to him bespeak a man whom neither
influence nor fear could tempt, who, with a firm courage and indomitable
constancy, remained faithful to the party which he had once chosen, but
who, it must at the same time be confessed, entertained too proud and
too despotic notions to have selected any other.

Amongst the adherents of the royal party at Brussels, we have, further,
the names of the Duke of Arschot, the Counts of Mansfeld, Megen, and
Aremberg--all three n