Were these the words of a baffled conspirator and traitor?  Were they uttered to produce an effect upon public opinion and avert a merited condemnation by all good men?  There is not in them a syllable of reproach, of anger, of despair.  And let it be remembered that they were not written for the public at all.  They were never known to the public, hardly heard of either by the Advocate’s enemies or friends, save the one to whom they were addressed and the monarch to whom that friend was accredited.  They were not contained in official despatches, but in private, confidential outpourings to a trusted political and personal associate of many years.  From the day they were written until this hour they have never been printed, and for centuries perhaps not read.

He proceeded to explain what he considered to be the law in the Netherlands with regard to military allegiance.  It is not probable that there was in the country a more competent expounder of it; and defective and even absurd as such a system was, it had carried the Provinces successfully through a great war, and a better method for changing it might have been found among so law-loving and conservative a people as the Netherlanders than brute force.

“Information has apparently been sent to England,” he said, “that My Lords of Holland through their commissioners in Utrecht dictated to the soldiery standing at their charges something that was unreasonable.  The truth is that the States of Holland, as many of them as were assembled, understanding that great haste was made to send his Excellency and some deputies from the other provinces to Utrecht, while the members of the Utrecht assembly were gone to report these difficulties to their constituents and get fresh instructions from them, wishing that the return of those members should be waited for and that the Assembly of Holland might also be complete—­a request which was refused—­sent a committee to Utrecht, as the matter brooked no delay, to give information to the States of that province of what was passing here and to offer their good offices.

“They sent letters also to his Excellency to move him to reasonable accommodation without taking extreme measures in opposition to those resolutions of the States of Utrecht which his Excellency had promised to conform with and to cause to be maintained by all officers and soldiers.  Should his Excellency make difficulty in this, the commissioners were instructed to declare to him that they were ordered to warn the colonels and captains standing in the payment of Holland, by letter and word of mouth, that they were bound by oath to obey the States of Holland as their paymasters and likewise to carry out the orders of the provincial and municipal magistrates in the places where they were employed.  The soldiery was not to act or permit anything to be done against those resolutions, but help to carry them out, his Excellency himself and the troops paid by the States of Holland being indisputably bound by oath and duty so to do.”