ainst Rome, Spain, and Austria had been
compounded. A breathing space of uncertain duration had come to interrupt
and postpone the general and inevitable conflict. Meantime the Republic
was encamped upon the enemy's soil.

France, which had hitherto commanded, now obeyed. England, vacillating
and discontented, now threatening and now cajoling, saw for the time at
least its influence over the councils of the Netherlands neutralized by
the genius of the great statesman who still governed the Provinces,
supreme in all but name. The hatred of the British government towards the
Republic, while in reality more malignant than at any previous period,
could now only find vent in tremendous, theological pamphlets, composed
by the King in the form of diplomatic instructions, and hurled almost
weekly at the heads of the States-General, by his ambassador, Dudley
Carleton.

Few men hated Barneveld more bitterly than did Carleton. I wish to
describe as rapidly, but as faithfully, as I can the outline at least of
the events by which one of the saddest and most superfluous catastrophes
in modern history was brought about. The web was a complex one, wrought
apparently of many materials; but the more completely it is unravelled
the more clearly we shall detect the presence of the few simple but
elemental fibres which make up the tissue of most human destinies,
whether illustrious or obscure, and out of which the most moving pictures
of human history are composed.

The religious element, which seems at first view to be the all pervading
and controlling one, is in reality rather the atmosphere which surrounds
and colours than the essence which constitutes the tragedy to be
delineated.

Personal, sometimes even paltry, jealousy; love of power, of money, of
place; rivalry between civil and military ambition for predominance in a
free state; struggles between Church and State to control and oppress
each other; conflict between the cautious and healthy, but provincial and
centrifugal, spirit on the one side, and the ardent centralizing,
imperial, but dangerous, instinct on the other, for ascendancy in a
federation; mortal combat between aristocracy disguised in the plebeian
form of trading and political corporations and democracy sheltering
itself under a famous sword and an ancient and illustrious name;--all
these principles and passions will be found hotly at work in the
melancholy five years with which we are now to be occupied, as they