the other provinces had similar but generally less extensive and
authoritative functions.

Such a medley of diverse and often conflicting authorities within a
state of so small an area has no counterpart in history. It seemed
impossible that government could be carried on, or that there could be
any concerted action or national policy in a republic which was rather a
many-headed confederation than a federal state. That the United
Netherlands, in spite of all these disadvantages, rapidly rose in the
17th century to be a maritime and commercial power of the first rank was
largely due to the fact that the foreign policy of the republic and the
general control of its administration was directed by a succession of
very able men, the stadholders of the house of Orange-Nassau and the
council-pensionaries of Holland. For a right understanding of the period
of Dutch history with which we are about to deal, it is necessary to
define clearly what was the position of the stadholder and of the
council-pensionary in this cumbrous and creaking machinery of government
that has just been described, and the character of those offices, which
conferred upon their holders such wide-reaching influence and authority.

The Stadholder or governor was really, both in title and office, an
anomaly in a republic. Under the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers the
Stadholder exercised the local authority in civil and also in military
matters as representing the sovereign duke, count or lord in the
province to which he was appointed, and was by that fact clothed with
certain sovereign attributes during his tenure of office. William the
Silent was Stadholder of Holland and Zeeland at the outbreak of the
revolt, and, though deprived of his offices, he continued until the time
of the Union of Utrecht to exercise authority in those and other
provinces professedly in the name of the king. After his death one would