ned into the forms which they were destined to retain for
centuries. In the history of civil liberty, these incessant contests,
these oral and written disquisitions, these sharp concussions of opinion,
and the still harder blows, which, unfortunately, were dealt on a few
occasions by the combatants upon each other, make the year 1587 a
memorable one. The great questions of the origin of government, the
balance of dynastic forces, the distribution of powers, were dealt with
by the ablest heads, both Dutch and English, that could be employed in
the service of the kingdom and republic. It was a war of protocols,
arguments, orations, rejoinders, apostilles, and pamphlets; very
wholesome for the cause of free institutions and the intellectual
progress of mankind. The reader may perhaps be surprised to see with how
much vigour and boldness the grave questions which underlie all polity,
were handled so many years before the days of Russell and Sidney, of
Montesquieu and Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Rousseau, and Voltaire; and
he may be even more astonished to find exceedingly democratic doctrines
propounded, if not believed in, by trained statesmen of the Elizabethan
school. He will be also apt to wonder that a more fitting time could not
be found for such philosophical debate than the epoch at which both the
kingdom and the republic were called upon to strain every sinew against
the most formidable and aggressive despotism that the world had known
since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The great dividing-line between the two parties, that of Leicester and
that of Holland, which controlled the action of the States-General, was
the question of sovereignty. After the declaration of independence and
the repudiation of Philip, to whom did the sovereignty belong? To the
people, said the Leicestrians. To the States-General and the
States-Provincial, as legitimate representatives of the people, said the
Holland party. Without looking for the moment more closely into this
question, which we shall soon find ably discussed by the most acute
reasoners of the time, it is only important at present to make a
preliminary reflection. The Earl of Leicester, of all men is the world,
would seem to have been precluded by his own action, and by the action of
his Queen, from taking ground against the States. It was the States who,
by solemn embassy, had offered the sovereignty to Elizabeth. She had not
accepted the offer, but she had deliberated on the