in the Netherlands, and upon a certain letter from the ambassador Alava in Paris to the Duchess of Parma.  He had, however, expressed his opinion to Madame that the letter was a forgery.  He had permitted public preaching in certain cities, outside the walls, where it had already been established, because this was in accordance with the treaty which Madame had made at Duffel, which she had ordered him honorably to maintain.  He had certainly winked at the religious exercises of the Reformers, because he had been expressly commanded to do so, and because the government at that time was not provided with troops to suppress the new religion by force.  He related the visit of Horn, Orange, and himself to Culemburg House, at the memorable banquet, in almost the same words which the Admiral had used.  He had done all in his power to prevent Madame from leaving Brussels, in which effort he had been successful, and from which much good had resulted to the country.  He had never recommended that a pardon should be granted to those who had taken up arms, but on the contrary, had advised their chastisement, as had appeared in his demeanor towards the rebels at Osterwel, Tournay, and Valenciennes.  He had never permitted the cry of “Vivent les gueux” at his own table, nor encouraged it in his presence any where else.

Such were the leading features in these memorable cases of what was called high treason.  Trial there was none.  The tribunal was incompetent; the prisoners were without advocates; the government evidence was concealed; the testimony for the defence was excluded; and the cause was finally decided before a thousandth part of its merits could have been placed under the eyes of the judge who gave the sentence.

But it is almost puerile to speak of the matter in the terms usually applicable to state trials.  The case had been settled in Madrid long before the arrest of the prisoners in Brussels.  The sentence, signed by Philip in blank, had been brought in Alva’s portfolio from Spain.  The proceedings were a mockery, and, so far as any effect upon public opinion was concerned, might as well have been omitted.  If the gentlemen had been shot in the court-yard of Jasse-house, by decree of a drum-head court-martial, an hour after their arrest, the rights of the provinces and the sentiments of humanity would not have been outraged more utterly.  Every constitutional and natural right was violated from first to last.  This certainly was not a novelty.  Thousands of obscure individuals, whose relations and friends were not upon thrones and in high places, but in booths and cellars, and whose fate therefore did not send a shudder of sympathy throughout Europe, had already been sacrificed by the Blood tribunal.  Still this great case presented a colossal emblem of the condition in which the Netherlands were now gasping.  It was a monumental exhibition of the truth which thousands had already learned to their cost, that law and justice were abrogated throughout the land.