, he had
accustomed himself, with the enormous exaggeration of party spirit, to
look upon the first statesman of his country and of Europe as a traitor
to the republic and a tool of the archdukes. As we look back upon those
passionate days, we cannot but be appalled at the depths to which
theological hatred could descend.

On the very morning after the session of the assembly in which Jeannin
had been making his great speech, and denouncing the practice of secret
and incendiary publication, three remarkable letters were found on the
doorstep of a house in the Hague. One was addressed to the
States-General, another to the Mates of Holland, and a third to the
burgomaster of Amsterdam. In all these documents, the Advocate was
denounced as an infamous traitor, who was secretly intriguing to bring
about a truce for the purpose of handing over the commonwealth to the
enemy. A shameful death, it was added, would be his fitting reward.

These letters were read in the Assembly of the States-General, and
created great wrath among the friends of Barneveld. Even Maurice
expressed indignation, and favoured a search for the anonymous author, in
order that he might be severely punished.

It seems strange enough that anonymous letters picked up in the street
should have been deemed a worthy theme of discussion before their High
Mightinesses the States-General. Moreover, it was raining pamphlets and
libels against Barneveld and his supporters every day, and the stories
which grave burghers and pious elders went about telling to each other,
and to everybody who would listen to them, about the Advocate's
depravity, were wonderful to hear.

At the end of September, just before the Spanish commissioners left the
Hague, a sledge of the kind used in the Dutch cities as drays stopped
before Barneveld's front-door one fine morning, and deposited several
large baskets, filled with money, sent by the envoys for defraying
certain expenses of forage, hire of servants, and the like, incurred by
them during their sojourn at the Hague, and disbursed by the States. The
sledge, with its contents, was at once sent by order of the Advocate,
under guidance of Commissary John Spronsen, to the Receiver-General of
the republic.

Yet men wagged their beards dismally as they whispered this fresh proof
of Barneveld's venality. As if Spinola and his colleagues were such
blunderers in bribing as to send bushel baskets full of Spanish dollars
on a sledge, in