yrant. Lamoral Egmont
had walked to the scaffold to which Philip had condemned him, chanting a
prayer for Philip's welfare. Egmont's eldest son was now foremost in the
Spanish army, doing battle against his own country in behalf of the
tyrant who had taken his father's life. Aremberg and Ligny, Arachot,
Chimay, Croy, Caprea, Montigny, and most of the great patrician families
of the Netherlands fought on the royal side.

The revolution which had saved the country from perdition and created the
great Netherland republic was a burgher revolution, and burgher statesmen
now controlled the State. The burgher class of Europe is not the one that
has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history, or that has
distinguished itself--especially in more modern times--by a passionate
love of liberty. It is always easy to sneer at Hans Miller and Hans
Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are powerful. Yet the
burghers played a prominent part in the great drama which forms my theme,
and there has rarely been seen a more solid or powerful type of their
class than the burgher statesman, John of Olden-Barneveld, who, since the
death of William the Silent and the departure of Lord Leicester, had
mainly guided the destinies of Holland. Certainly no soldier nor
statesman who ever measured intellects with that potent personage was apt
to treat his genius otherwise than with profound respect.

But it is difficult to form a logical theory of government except on the
fiction of divine right as a basis, unless the fact of popular
sovereignty, as expressed by a majority, be frankly accepted in spite of
philosophical objections.

In the Netherlands there was no king, and strictly speaking no people.
But this latter and fatal defect was not visible in the period of danger
and of contest. The native magistrates of that age were singularly pure,
upright, and patriotic. Of this there is no question whatever. And the
people acquiesced cheerfully in their authority, not claiming a larger
representation than such as they virtually possessed in the multiple
power exercised over them, by men moving daily among them, often of
modest fortunes and of simple lives. Two generations later, and in the
wilderness of Massachusetts, the early American colonists voluntarily
placed in the hands of their magistrates, few in number, unlimited
control of all the functions of government, and there was hardly an
instance known of an impure exercise of a