by which the gigantic war had been fought out.  After all, foreign powers had no connection with the States, and knew only the Union with which and with which alone they made treaties, and the reality of sovereignty in each province was as ridiculous as in theory it was impregnable.  But Barneveld, under the modest title of Advocate of one province, had been in reality president and prime minister of the whole commonwealth.  He had himself been the union and the sovereignty.  It was not wonderful that so imperious a nature objected to transfer its powers to the Church, to the States-General, or to Maurice.

Moreover, when nationality assumed the unlovely form of rigid religious uniformity; when Union meant an exclusive self-governed Church enthroned above the State, responsible to no civic authority and no human law, the boldest patriot might shiver at emerging from provincialism.

CHAPTER XV.

The Commonwealth bent on Self-destruction—­Evils of a Confederate System of Government—­Rem Bischop’s House sacked—­Aerssens’ unceasing Efforts against Barneveld—­The Advocate’s Interview with Maurice—­The States of Utrecht raise the Troops—­The Advocate at Utrecht—­Barneveld urges mutual Toleration—­Barneveld accused of being Partisan of Spain—­Carleton takes his Departure.

It is not cheerful after widely contemplating the aspect of Christendom in the year of supreme preparation to examine with the minuteness absolutely necessary the narrow theatre to which the political affairs of the great republic had been reduced.

That powerful commonwealth, to which the great party of the Reformation naturally looked for guidance in the coming conflict, seemed bent on self-destruction.  The microcosm of the Netherlands now represented, alas! the war of elements going on without on a world-wide scale.  As the Calvinists and Lutherans of Germany were hotly attacking each other even in sight of the embattled front of Spain and the League, so the Gomarites and the Arminians by their mutual rancour were tearing the political power of the Dutch Republic to shreds and preventing her from assuming a great part in the crisis.  The consummate soldier, the unrivalled statesman, each superior in his sphere to any contemporary rival, each supplementing the other, and making up together, could they have been harmonized, a double head such as no political organism then existing could boast, were now in hopeless antagonism to each other.  A mass of hatred had been accumulated against the Advocate with which he found it daily more and more difficult to struggle.  The imperious, rugged, and suspicious nature of the Stadholder had been steadily wrought upon by the almost devilish acts of Francis Aerssens until he had come to look upon his father’s most faithful adherent, his own early preceptor in statesmanship and political supporter, as an antagonist, a conspirator, and a tyrant.