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 subject, and certainly
she had never expressed a doubt whether or not the offer had been legally
made. By the States, too, that governor-generalship had been conferred
upon the Earl, which had been so thankfully and eagerly accepted. It was
strange, then, that he should deny the existence of the power whence his
own authority was derived. If the States were not sovereigns of the
Netherlands, he certainly was nothing. He was but general of a few
thousand English troops.

The Leicester party, then, proclaimed extreme democratic principles as to
the origin of government and the sovereignty of the people. They sought
to strengthen and to make almost absolute the executive authority of
their chief, on the ground that such was the popular will; and they
denounced with great acrimony the insolence of the upstart members of the
States, half a dozen traders, hired advocates, churls, tinkers, and the
like--as Leicester was fond of designating the men who opposed him--in
assuming these airs of sovereignty.

This might, perhaps, be philosophical doctrine, had its supporters not
forgotten that there had never been any pretence at an expression of the
national will, except through the mouths of the States. The
States-General and the States-Provincial, without any usurpation, but as
a matter of fact and of great political convenience, had, during fifteen
years, exercised the authority which had fallen from Philip's hands. The
people hitherto had acquiesced in their action, and certainly there had
not yet been any call for a popular convention, or any other device to
ascertain the popular will. It was also difficult to imagine what was the
exact entity of this abstraction called the "people" by men who expressed
such extreme contempt for "merchants, advocates, town-orators, churls,
tinkers, and base mechanic men, born not to co