s
of Brabant, "to consider the danger in which you have placed yourselves.
You have to deal with the proudest and most overbearing race in the
world. For these qualities they are hated by all other nations. They are
even hateful to themselves. 'Tis a race which seeks to domineer
wheresoever it comes. It particularly declares its intention to crush and
to tyrannize you, my masters, and all the land. They have conquered you
already, as they boast, for the crime of lese-majesty has placed you at
their mercy. I tell you that your last act, by which you have declared
this army to be rebels, is decisive. You have armed and excited the whole
people against them, even to the peasants and the peasants' children, and
the insults and injuries thus received, however richly deserved and
dearly avenged, are all set down to your account. Therefore, 'tis
necessary for you to decide now, whether to be utterly ruined, yourselves
and your children, or to continue firmly the work which you have begun
boldly, and rather to die a hundred thousand deaths than to make a treaty
with them, which can only end in your ruin. Be assured that the measure
dealt to you will be ignominy as well as destruction. Let not your
leaders expect the honorable scaffolds of Counts Egmont and Horn. The
whipping-post and then the gibbet will be their certain fate."

Having by this and similar language, upon various occasions, sought to
impress upon his countrymen the gravity of the position, he led them to
seek the remedy in audacity and in union. He familiarized them with his
theory, that the legal, historical government of the provinces belonged
to the states-general, to a congress of nobles, clergy, and commons,
appointed from each of the seventeen provinces. He maintained, with
reason, that the government of the Netherlands was a representative
constitutional government, under the hereditary authority of the King. To
recover this constitution, to lift up these down-trodden rights, he set
before them most vividly the necessity of union, "'Tis impossible," he
said, "that a chariot should move evenly having its wheels unequally
proportioned; and so must a confederation be broken to pieces, if there
be not an equal obligation on all to tend to a common purpose." Union,
close, fraternal, such as became provinces of a common origin and with
similar laws, could alone save them from their fate. Union against a
common tyrant to save a common fatherland. Union; by which d