of the country, in their main characteristics, have been
frequently sketched in these pages. At this period they had entered
almost completely into the forms which were destined to endure until the
commonwealth fell in the great crash of the French Revolution. Their
beneficial effects were more visible now--sustained and bound together as
the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness
of its daily developing strength--than at a later day when prosperity and
luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism.

The supreme power, after the deposition of Philip, and the refusal by
France and by England to accept the sovereignty of the provinces, was
definitely lodged in the States-General. But the States-General did not
technically represent the people. Its members were not elected by the
people. It was a body composed of, delegates from each provincial
assembly, of which there were now five: Holland, Zeeland, Friesland,
Utrecht, and Gelderland. Each provincial assembly consisted again of
delegates, not from the inhabitants of the provinces, but from the
magistracies of the cities. Those, magistracies, again, were not elected
by the citizens. They elected themselves by renewing their own vacancies,
and were, in short, immortal corporations. Thus, in final analysis, the
supreme power was distributed and localised among the mayors and aldermen
of a large number of cities, all independent alike of the people below
and of any central power above.

It is true that the nobles, as, a class, had a voice in the provincial
and, in the general assembly, both for themselves and as technical
representatives of the smaller towns and of the rural population. But, as
a matter of fact, the influence of this caste had of late years very
rapidly diminished, through its decrease in numbers, and the far more
rapid increase in wealth and power of the commercial and manufacturing
classes. Individual nobles were constantly employed in the military,
civil, and diplomatic service of the republic, but their body had ceased
to be a power. It had been the policy of William the Silent to increase
the number of cities entitled to send deputies to the States; for it was
among the cities that his resistance to the tyranny of Spain, and his
efforts to obtain complete independence for his country, had been mainly
supported. Many of the great nobles, as has been seen in these pages,
denounced the liberator and took sides with the t