t whatever. It was an awful dilemma, and it is difficult
here fully to sympathize with the Advocate, for he it was who inspired,
without dictating, the course of the Utrecht proceedings.

With him patriotism seemed at this moment to dwindle into provincialism,
the statesman to shrink into the lawyer.

Certainly there was no guilt in the proceedings. There was no crime in
the heart of the Advocate. He had exhausted himself with appeals in
favour of moderation, conciliation, compromise. He had worked night and
day with all the energy of a pure soul and a great mind to assuage
religious hatreds and avert civil dissensions. He was overpowered. He had
frequently desired to be released from all his functions, but as dangers
thickened over the Provinces, he felt it his duty so long as he remained
at his post to abide by the law as the only anchor in the storm. Not
rising in his mind to the height of a national idea, and especially
averse from it when embodied in the repulsive form of religious
uniformity, he did not shrink from a contest which he had not provoked,
but had done his utmost to avert. But even then he did not anticipate
civil war. The enrolling of the Waartgelders was an armed protest, a
symbol of legal conviction rather than a serious effort to resist the
general government. And this is the chief justification of his course
from a political point of view. It was ridiculous to suppose that with a
few hundred soldiers hastily enlisted--and there were less than 1800
Waartgelders levied throughout the Provinces and under the orders of
civil magistrates--a serious contest was intended against a splendidly
disciplined army of veteran troops, commanded by the first general of the
age.

From a legal point of view Barneveld considered his position impregnable.

The controversy is curious, especially for Americans, and for all who are
interested in the analysis of federal institutions and of republican
principles, whether aristocratic or democratic. The States of Utrecht
replied in decorous but firm language to the committee of the
States-General that they had raised the six companies in accordance with
their sovereign right so to do, and that they were resolved to maintain
them. They could not wait as they had been obliged to do in the time of
the Earl of Leicester and more recently in 1610 until they had been
surprised and overwhelmed by the enemy before the States-General and his
Excellency the Prince could come to t