That he should now in his seventy-second year be dragged, in violation of every privilege and statute of the country, by extraordinary means, before unknown judges, was a grave matter not for himself alone but for their Mightinesses the States of Holland and for the other provinces.  The precious right ‘de non evocando’ had ever been dear to all the provinces, cities, and inhabitants of the Netherlands.  It was the most vital privilege in their possession as well in civil as criminal, in secular as in ecclesiastical affairs.

When the King of Spain in 1567, and afterwards, set up an extraordinary tribunal and a course of extraordinary trials, it was an undeniable fact, he said, that on the solemn complaint of the States all princes, nobles, and citizens not only in the Netherlands but in foreign countries, and all foreign kings and sovereigns, held those outrages to be the foremost and fundamental reason for taking up arms against that king, and declaring him to have forfeited his right of sovereignty.

Yet that monarch was unquestionably the born and accepted sovereign of each one of the provinces, while the General Assembly was but a gathering of confederates and allies, in no sense sovereign.  It was an unimaginable thing, he said, that the States of each province should allow their whole authority and right of sovereignty to be transferred to a board of commissioners like this before which he stood.  If, for example, a general union of France, England, and the States of the United Netherlands should be formed (and the very words of the Act of Union contemplated such possibility), what greater absurdity could there be than to suppose that a college of administration created for the specific purposes of such union would be competent to perform acts of sovereignty within each of those countries in matters of justice, polity, and religion?

It was known to mankind, he said, that when negotiations were entered into for bestowing the sovereignty of the Provinces on France and on England, special and full powers were required from, and furnished by, the States of each individual province.

Had the sovereignty been in the assembly of the States-General, they might have transferred it of their own motion or kept it for themselves.

Even in the ordinary course of affairs the commissioners from each province to the General Assembly always required a special power from their constituents before deciding any matter of great importance.

In regard to the defence of the respective provinces and cities, he had never heard it doubted, he said, that the states or the magistrates of cities had full right to provide for it by arming a portion of their own inhabitants or by enlisting paid troops.  The sovereign counts of Holland and bishops of Utrecht certainly possessed and exercised that right for many hundred years, and by necessary tradition it passed to the states succeeding to their ancient sovereignty.