with many
demonstrations of respect, "with solemn speeches" from magistrates and
burgher-captains, with military processions, and with great banquets,
which were, however, conducted with decorum, and at which even Count
Moeurs excited universal astonishment by his sobriety. It was difficult,
however, for matters to go very smoothly, except upon the surface. What
could be more disastrous than for a little commonwealth--a mere handful
of people, like these Netherlanders, engaged in mortal combat with the
most powerful monarch in the world, and with the first general of the
age, within a league of their borders--thus to be deprived of all
organized government at a most critical moment, and to be left to wrangle
with their allies and among themselves, as to the form of polity to be
adopted, while waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman?

And the very foundation of the authority by which the Spanish yoke had
been abjured, the sovereignty offered to Elizabeth, and the
government-general conferred on Leicester, was fiercely assailed by the
confidential agents of Elizabeth herself. The dispute went into the very
depths of the social contract. Already Wilkes, standing up stoutly for
the democratic views of the governor, who was so foully to requite him,
had assured the English government that the "people were ready to cut the
throats" of the Staten-General at any convenient moment. The sovereign
people, not the deputies, were alone to be heeded, he said, and although
he never informed the world by what process he had learned the deliberate
opinion of that sovereign, as there had been no assembly excepting those
of the States-General and States-Provincial--he was none the less fully
satisfied that the people were all with Leicester, and bitterly opposed
to the States.

"For the sovereignty, or supreme authority," said he, through failure of
a legitimate prince, belongs to the people, and not to you, gentlemen,
who are only servants, ministers, and deputies of the people. You have
your commissions or instructions surrounded by limitations--which
conditions are so widely different from the power of sovereignty, as the
might of the subject is in regard to his prince, or of a servant in,
respect to his master. For sovereignty is not limited either as to power
or as to time. Still less do you represent the sovereignty; for the
people, in giving the general and absolute government to the Earl of
Leicester, have conferr