for men. A chain of corporations was wound about the liberty of the
Netherlands; yet that liberty had been originally sustained by the system
in which it, one day, might be strangled. The spirit of local self-
government, always the life-blood of liberty, was often excessive in its
manifestations. The centrifugal force had been too much developed, and,
combining with the mutual jealousy of corporations, had often made the
nation weak against a common foe. Instead of popular rights there were
state rights, for the large cities, with extensive districts and villages
under their government, were rather petty states than municipalities.
Although the supreme legislative and executive functions belonged to the
sovereign, yet each city made its by-laws, and possessed, beside, a body
of statutes and regulations, made from time to time by its own authority
and confirmed by the prince. Thus a large portion, at least, of the
nation shared practically in the legislative functions, which,
technically, it did not claim; nor had the requirements of society made
constant legislation so necessary, as that to exclude the people from the
work was to enslave the country. There was popular power enough to
effect much good, but it was widely scattered, and, at the same time,
confined in artificial forms. The guilds were vassals of the towns, the
towns, vassals of the feudal lord. The guild voted in the "broad
council" of the city as one person; the city voted in the estates as one
person. The people of the United Netherlands was the personage yet to be
invented, It was a privilege, not a right, to exercise a handiwork, or to
participate in the action of government. Yet the mass of privileges was
so large, the shareholders so numerous, that practically the towns were
republics. The government was in the hands of a large number of the
people. Industry and intelligence led to wealth and power. This was
great progress from the general servitude of the 11th and 12th centuries,
an immense barrier against arbitrary rule. Loftier ideas of human
rights, larger conceptions of commerce, have taught mankind, in later