With him patriotism seemed at this moment to dwindle into provincialism, the statesman to shrink into the lawyer.

Certainly there was no guilt in the proceedings.  There was no crime in the heart of the Advocate.  He had exhausted himself with appeals in favour of moderation, conciliation, compromise.  He had worked night and day with all the energy of a pure soul and a great mind to assuage religious hatreds and avert civil dissensions.  He was overpowered.  He had frequently desired to be released from all his functions, but as dangers thickened over the Provinces, he felt it his duty so long as he remained at his post to abide by the law as the only anchor in the storm.  Not rising in his mind to the height of a national idea, and especially averse from it when embodied in the repulsive form of religious uniformity, he did not shrink from a contest which he had not provoked, but had done his utmost to avert.  But even then he did not anticipate civil war.  The enrolling of the Waartgelders was an armed protest, a symbol of legal conviction rather than a serious effort to resist the general government.  And this is the chief justification of his course from a political point of view.  It was ridiculous to suppose that with a few hundred soldiers hastily enlisted—­and there were less than 1800 Waartgelders levied throughout the Provinces and under the orders of civil magistrates—­a serious contest was intended against a splendidly disciplined army of veteran troops, commanded by the first general of the age.

From a legal point of view Barneveld considered his position impregnable.

The controversy is curious, especially for Americans, and for all who are interested in the analysis of federal institutions and of republican principles, whether aristocratic or democratic.  The States of Utrecht replied in decorous but firm language to the committee of the States-General that they had raised the six companies in accordance with their sovereign right so to do, and that they were resolved to maintain them.  They could not wait as they had been obliged to do in the time of the Earl of Leicester and more recently in 1610 until they had been surprised and overwhelmed by the enemy before the States-General and his Excellency the Prince could come to their rescue.  They could not suffer all the evils of tumults, conspiracies, and foreign invasion, without defending themselves.

Making use, they said, of the right of sovereignty which in their province belonged to them alone, they thought it better to prevent in time and by convenient means such fire and mischief than to look on while it kindled and spread into a conflagration, and to go about imploring aid from their fellow confederates who, God better it, had enough in these times to do at home.  This would only be to bring them as well as this province into trouble, disquiet, and expense.  “My Lords the States of Utrecht have conserved and continually exercised this right of sovereignty in its entireness ever since renouncing the King of Spain.  Every contract, ordinance, and instruction of the States-General has been in conformity with it, and the States of Utrecht are convinced that the States of not one of their confederate provinces would yield an atom of its sovereignty.”