“You have doubtless heard already,” wrote Barneveld to the ambassador in London, “of all that has been passing here and in Utrecht.  One must pray to God that everything may prosper to his honour and the welfare of the country.  They are resolved to go through with the National Synod, the government of Utrecht after the change made in it having consented with the rest.  I hope that his Majesty, according to your statement, will send some good, learned, and peace-loving personages here, giving them wholesome instructions to help bring our affairs into Christian unity, accommodation, and love, by which his Majesty and these Provinces would be best served.”

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.