After this fabulous preamble, they proceeded to handle the matter of fact with logical precision.  It was absurd, they said, that Mr. Wilkes and Lord Leicester should affect to confound the persons who appeared in the assembly with the States themselves; as if those individuals claimed or exercised sovereignty.  Any man who had observed what had been passing during the last fifteen years, knew very well that the supreme authority did not belong to the thirty or forty individuals who came to the meetings . . . .  The nobles, by reason of their ancient dignity and splendid possessions, took counsel together over state matters, and then, appearing at the assembly, deliberated with the deputies of the cities.  The cities had mainly one form of government—­a college of counsellors; or wise men, 40, 32, 28, or 24 in number, of the most respectable out of the whole community.  They were chosen for life, and vacancies were supplied by the colleges themselves out of the mass of citizens.  These colleges alone governed the city, and that which had been ordained by them was to be obeyed by all the inhabitants—­a system against which there had never been any rebellion.  The colleges again, united with those of the nobles, represented the whole state, the whole body of the population; and no form of government could be imagined, they said, that could resolve, with a more thorough knowledge of the necessities of the country, or that could execute its resolves with more unity of purpose and decisive authority.  To bring the colleges into an assembly could only be done by means of deputies.  These deputies, chosen by their colleges, and properly instructed, were sent to the place of meeting.  During the war they had always been commissioned to resolve in common on matters regarding the liberty of the land.  These deputies, thus assembled, represented, by commission, the States; but they are not, in their own persons, the States; and no one of them had any such pretension.  “The people of this country,” said the States, “have an aversion to all ambition; and in these disastrous times, wherein nothing but trouble and odium is to be gathered by public employment, these commissions are accounted ‘munera necessaria’. . . .  This form of government has, by God’s favour, protected Holland and Zeeland, during this war, against a powerful foe, without lose of territory, without any popular outbreak, without military mutiny, because all business has been transacted with open doors; and because the very smallest towns are all represented, and vote in the assembly.”

In brief, the constitution of the United Provinces was a matter of fact.  It was there in good working order, and had, for a generation of mankind, and throughout a tremendous war, done good service.  Judged by the principles of reason and justice, it was in the main a wholesome constitution, securing the independence and welfare of the state, and the liberty and property of the individual, as well certainly as did any polity then existing in the world.  It seemed more hopeful to abide by it yet a little longer than to adopt the throat-cutting system by the people, recommended by Wilkes and Leicester as an improvement on the old constitution.  This was the view of Lord Buckhurst.  He felt that threats of throat-cutting were not the best means of smoothing and conciliating, and he had come over to smooth and conciliate.