The formal interchange of documents soon afterwards took place.  The conversation thus held between the different parties shows, however, the exact position of, affairs.  There was no change in the intentions of either; Reformers or Royalists.  Philip and his representatives still contended for two points, and claimed the praise of moderation that their demands were so few in number.  They were willing to concede everything, save the unlimited authority of the King and the exclusive maintenance of the Catholic religion.  The Prince of Orange, on his side, claimed two points also—­the ancient constitutions of the country and religious freedom.  It was obvious enough that the contest was, the same in reality, as it had ever been.  No approximation had been made towards reconciling absolutism with national liberty, persecution with toleration.  The Pacification of Ghent had been a step in advance.  That Treaty opened the door to civil and religious liberty, but it was an agreement among the provinces, not a compact between the people and the monarch.  By the casuists of Brussels and the licentiates of Louvain, it had, to be sure, been dogmatically pronounced orthodox, and had been confirmed by royal edict.  To believe, however, that his Catholic Majesty had faith in the dogmas propounded, was as absurd as to believe in the dogmas themselves.  If the Ghent Pacification really had made no breach in royal and Roman infallibility, then the efforts of Orange and the exultation of the Reformers had indeed been idle.

The envoys accordingly, in obedience to their instructions, made a formal statement to the Prince of Orange and the states of Holland and Zealand, on the part of Don John.  They alluded to the departure of the Spaniards, as if that alone had fulfilled every duty and authorized every claim.  They therefore demanded the immediate publication in Holland and Zealand of the Perpetual Edict.  They insisted on the immediate discontinuance of all hostile attempts to reduce Amsterdam to the jurisdiction of Orange; required the Prince to abandon his pretensions to Utrecht, and denounced the efforts making by him and his partisans to diffuse their heretical doctrines through the other provinces.  They observed, in conclusion, that the general question of religion was not to be handled, because reserved for the consideration of the states-general, according to the treaty of Ghent.

The reply, delivered on the following day by the Prince of Orange and the deputies, maintained that the Perpetual Edict was widely different from the Pacification of Ghent, which it affected to uphold; that the promises to abstain from all violation of the ancient constitutions had not been kept; that the German troops had not been dismissed, that the property of the Prince in the Netherlands and Burgundy had not been restored, that his son was detained in captivity, that the government of Utrecht was withheld from him, that the charters and constitution of the country, instead of being