kept constantly on foot. They placed the
requisite monthly expenses, if hostilities were resumed, at 800,000
florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the
8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the republic
could scarcely stagger much longer. Such figures seem modest enough, as
the price of a war of independence.

Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with
something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed, to
the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful
fictions. Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides. The
awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical
strength. He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has
Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone. Without it, what
exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy? After what
has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that
distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes. Already an
eighty years' war, such as once was waged, has become inconceivable. Let
two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three weeks' campaign may
exhaust an empire.

Meantime the war of words continued. A proclamation with penalties was
issued by the States against the epidemic plague of pamphlets or
"blue-books," as those publications were called in Holland, but with
little result. It was not deemed consistent with liberty by those
republicans to put chains on the press because its utterances might
occasionally be distasteful to magistrates. The writers, printers, and
sellers of the "blue-books" remained unpunished and snapped their fingers
at the placard.

We have seen the strenuous exertions of the Nassaus and their adherents
by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of
truce. The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders.
They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the
waspish effusions of the daily press. The magistrates remained calm, and
took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld. That statesman,
while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, became more
and more odious to the humbler classes, to the Nassaus, and especially to
the Calvinist clergy. He was denounced, as a papist, an atheist, a
traitor, because striving for an honourable peace with the foe, and
because admitting the possibili