or his master that he
considered it a mercantile transaction, or if any effort had ever been
made by the Advocate to help Henry to the Batavian throne. This however
is not the case.

In truth, neither Maurice nor Barneveld was likely to assist the French
king in his intrigues against the independence of their fatherland. Both
had higher objects of ambition than to become the humble and well-paid
servants of a foreign potentate. The stadholder doubtless dreamed of a
crown which might have been his father's, and which his own illustrious
services might be supposed to have earned for himself. If that tempting
prize were more likely to be gained by a continuance of the war, it is
none the less certain that he considered peace, and still more truce, as
fatal to the independence of the provinces.

The Advocate, on the other hand, loved his country well. Perhaps he loved
power even better. To govern the city magistracies of Holland, through
them the provincial estates; and through them again the States-General of
the whole commonwealth; as first citizen of a republic to wield; the
powers of a king; as statesman, diplomatist, and financier, to create a
mighty empire out of those slender and but recently emancipated provinces
of Spain, was a more flattering prospect for a man of large intellect,
iron will, and infinite resources, than to sink into the contemptible
position of stipendiary to a foreign master. He foresaw change, growth,
transformation in the existing condition of things. Those great
corporations the East and West India Companies were already producing a
new organism out of the political and commercial chaos which had been so
long brooding over civilization. Visions of an imperial zone extending
from the little Batavian island around the earth, a chain of forts and
factories dotting the newly-discovered and yet undiscovered points of
vantage, on island or promontory, in every sea; a watery, nebulous, yet
most substantial empire--not fantastic, but practical--not picturesque
and mediaeval, but modern and lucrative--a world-wide commonwealth with a
half-submerged metropolis, which should rule the ocean with its own
fleets and, like Venice and Florence, job its land wars with mercenary
armies--all these dreams were not the cloudy pageant of a poet but the
practical schemes of a great creative mind. They were destined to become
reality. Had the geographical conditions been originally more favourable
than they were, ha