ill failure! He trusted no man. He
probably poisoned his own son, Don Carlos. His treachery was black as
Caesar Borgia's; and to his chosen counselors he wrote interminable
lies, apparently deeming lying a virtue. He offered fabulous sums of
money for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, of King Henry IV, and
of William, Prince of Orange, and finally gave William's estate to the
relatives of Gerard, the assassin of the prince. Philip was
painstaking, not sagacious. While admiring his industry, I can not
bring myself to the point of believing he had greatness. A superior
chief clerk he was, and an inferior king.

William the Silent, Prince of Orange, moneyless, resourceless, defeated
the richest empire of the world without winning a single decisive
victory. So viewed, he is a statesman of magnificent proportions. At
his death, fifteen out of the seventeen provinces were in rebellion;
and had he lived, there can be no rational doubt the remaining two had
rebelled and the seventeen become free. As it was, seven provinces won
their liberty, and in 1648, at the Peace of Westphalia, were
acknowledged as a sovereign State and free from Spain.

William was importuned, vehemently importuned, to become king. He
refused, as Cromwell in a later day refused, though, had Cromwell
become king, there is no reason why he might not have handed down his
scepter to his son. What sealed Richard Cromwell's fate was that he
was not a king, the English wishing to feel they had a hereditary head.
This was the mistake of the Prince of Orange. While his refusal of
regal honors reflected credit on his manhood and disinterested
patriotism, that refusal was a weakness to the cause of liberty. About
a king men of those days would have rallied as about no Stadtholder;
for the Flemings were never essentially republican in instincts.
Freemen they learned to be; republicans they never learned to be. Had
William of Orange become king, then had his son, as sovereign, led his
subjects to battle. As yet Europe was not ready for a commonwealth.
As the case stood, William lived, loving his country with an ingenuous
affection; was a patriot statesman, whose reward for years of toil,
which seamed his brow at the age of forty as if he had been seventy,
was an impoverished estate, but an imperishable fame.

On July 10, 1584, Belthazer Gerard shot "Father William" in his own
home, and he, falling, cried: "My God, have pity on my soul! I am
sore