would make success certain and who had represented to her that, as he was himself resolved never to marry, the inheritance after his death would fall to her son Frederick Henry.  The Princess, who was of a most amiable disposition, adored her son.  Devoted to the House of Nassau and a great admirer of its chief, she had a long interview with Barneveld, in which she urged the scheme upon his attention without in any probability revealing that she had come to him at the solicitation of Maurice.

The Advocate spoke to her with frankness and out of the depths of his heart.  He professed an ardent attachment to her family, a profound reverence for the virtues, sacrifices, and achievements of her lamented husband, and a warm desire to do everything to further the interests of the son who had proved himself so worthy of his parentage.

But he proved to her that Maurice, in seeking the sovereignty, was seeking his ruin.  The Hollanders, he said, liked to be persuaded and not forced.  Having triumphantly shaken off the yoke of a powerful king, they would scarcely consent now to accept the rule of any personal sovereign.  The desire to save themselves from the claws of Spain had led them formerly to offer the dominion over them to various potentates.  Now that they had achieved peace and independence and were delivered from the fears of Spanish ferocity and French intrigue, they shuddered at the dangers from royal hands out of which they had at last escaped.  He believed that they would be capable of tearing in pieces any one who might make the desired proposition.  After all, he urged, Maurice was a hundred times more fortunate as he was than if he should succeed in desires so opposed to his own good.  This splendour of sovereignty was a false glare which would lead him to a precipice.  He had now the power of a sovereign without the envy which ever followed it.  Having essentially such power, he ought, like his father, to despise an empty name, which would only make him hated.  For it was well known that William the Silent had only yielded to much solicitation, agreeing to accept that which then seemed desirable for the country’s good but to him was more than indifferent.

Maurice was captain-general and admiral-general of five provinces.  He appointed to governments and to all military office.  He had a share of appointment to the magistracies.  He had the same advantages and the same authority as had been enjoyed in the Netherlands by the ancient sovereign counts, by the dukes of Burgundy, by Emperor Charles V. himself.

Every one now was in favour of increasing his pensions, his salaries, his material splendour.  Should he succeed in seizing the sovereignty, men would envy him even to the ribbands of his pages’ and his lackeys’ shoes.  He turned to the annals of Holland and showed the Princess that there had hardly been a sovereign count against whom his subjects had not revolted, marching generally into the very courtyard of the palace at the Hague in order to take his life.