It may well be supposed that the virtual head of the government liked not the triumph of mob law, in the name of religion, over the civil authority.  The Advocate was neither democrat nor demagogue.  A lawyer, a magistrate, and a noble, he had but little sympathy with the humbler classes, which he was far too much in the habit of designating as rabble and populace.  Yet his anger was less against them than against the priests, the foreigners, the military and diplomatic mischief-makers, by whom they were set upon to dangerous demonstrations.  The old patrician scorned the arts by which highborn demagogues in that as in every age affect adulation for inferiors whom they despise.  It was his instinct to protect, and guide the people, in whom he recognized no chartered nor inherent right to govern.  It was his resolve, so long as breath was in him, to prevent them from destroying life and property and subverting the government under the leadership of an inflamed priesthood.

It was with this intention, as we have just seen, and in order to avoid bloodshed, anarchy, and civil war in the streets of every town and village, that a decisive but in the Advocate’s opinion a perfectly legal step had been taken by the States of Holland.  It had become necessary to empower the magistracies of towns to defend themselves by enrolled troops against mob violence and against an enforced synod considered by great lawyers as unconstitutional.

Aerssens resided in Zealand, and the efforts of that ex-ambassador were unceasing to excite popular animosity against the man he hated and to trouble the political waters in which no man knew better than he how to cast the net.

“The States of Zealand,” said the Advocate to the ambassador in London, “have a deputation here about the religious differences, urging the holding of a National Synod according to the King’s letters, to which some other provinces and some of the cities of Holland incline.  The questions have not yet been defined by a common synod, so that a national one could make no definition, while the particular synods and clerical personages are so filled with prejudices and so bound by mutual engagements of long date as to make one fear an unfruitful issue.  We are occupied upon this point in our assembly of Holland to devise some compromise and to discover by what means these difficulties may be brought into a state of tranquillity.”

It will be observed that in all these most private and confidential utterances of the Advocate a tone of extreme moderation, an anxious wish to save the Provinces from dissensions, dangers, and bloodshed, is distinctly visible.  Never is he betrayed into vindictive, ambitious, or self-seeking expressions, while sometimes, although rarely, despondent in mind.  Nor was his opposition to a general synod absolute.  He was probably persuaded however, as we have just seen, that it should of necessity be preceded by provincial ones, both in due regard to the laws of the land and to the true definition of the points to be submitted to its decision.  He had small hope of a successful result from it.