elft. To Delft they accordingly went; but,
within half a league of that place, met a courier with strict orders that
the monk was at once to return to Brussels. Brother John was in great
agitation. Should he go back, the whole negotiation might come to nought;
should he go on, he might be clapped into prison as a spy. Being
conscious, however, that his services as a spy were intended to be the
most valuable part of his mission, he resolved to proceed in that
capacity. So he persuaded his friend Dirk to hide him in the hold of a
canal-boat. Van der Does was in great trepidation himself, but on
reaching the Hague and giving up his gold chain to Barneveld, he made his
peace, and obtained leave for the trembling but audacious friar to come
out of his hiding-place.

Appearing once more before the States-General on the afternoon of 7th
May, Neyen urged with much eloquence the propriety of an immediate
armistice both by sea and land, insisting that it would be a sanguinary
farce to establish a cessation of hostilities upon one element while
blood and treasure were profusely flowing on the oceans. There were
potent reasons for this earnestness on the part of the monk to procure a
truce to maritime operations, as very soon was to be made evident to the
world. Meantime, on this renewed visit, the negotiator expressed himself
as no longer doubtful in regard to the propriety of requesting the
Spanish king's consent to the proposed negotiations. That consent,
however, would in his opinion depend upon the earnestness now to be
manifested by the States in establishing the armistice by sea and land,
and upon their promptness in recalling the fleets now infesting the coast
of Spain. No immediate answer was given to these representations, but
Neyen was requested to draw up his argument in writing, in order that it
might be duly pondered by the States of the separate provinces.

The radical defect of the Dutch constitution--the independent sovereignty
claimed by each one of the provinces composing the confederation, each of
those provinces on its part being composed of cities, each again claiming
something very like sovereignty for itself--could not fail to be
manifested whenever, great negotiations with foreign powers were to be
undertaken. To obtain the unanimous consent of seven independent little
republics was a work of difficulty, requiring immense expenditure of time
in comparatively unimportant contingencies. How intolerable might