the geographical, continuity of the land was obliterated by this
tremendous deluge. The Hollanders were cut off from their relatives in
the east by as dangerous a sea as that which divided them from their
Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain. The deputies to the general assemblies
at Aurich could no longer undertake a journey grown so perilous. West
Friesland became absorbed in Holland. East Friesland remained a
federation of rude but self-governed maritime provinces, until the brief
and bloody dominion of the Saxon dukes led to the establishment of
Charles the Fifth's authority. Whatever the nominal sovereignty over
them, this most republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Europeans, had
never accepted feudalism. There was an annual congress of the whole
confederacy. Each of the seven little states, on the other hand,
regulated its own internal affairs. Each state was subdivided into
districts, each district governed by a Griet-mann (greatman, selectman)
and assistants. Above all these district officers was a Podesta, a
magistrate identical, in name and functions, with the chief officer of
the Italian republics. There was sometimes but one Podesta; sometimes
one for each province. He was chosen by the people, took oath of
fidelity to the separate estates, or, if Podesta-general, to the federal
diet, and was generally elected for a limited term, although sometimes
for life. He was assisted by a board of eighteen or twenty councillors.
The deputies to the general congress were chosen by popular suffrage in
Easter-week. The clergy were not recognized as a political estate.

Thus, in those lands which a niggard nature had apparently condemned to
perpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable human
freedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worth
contending for, was taking deepest and strongest root. Already in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Friesland was a republic, except in
name; Holland, Flanders, Brabant, had acquired a large share of self-