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-government. The powerful commonwealth, at a later period to be
evolved out of the great combat between centralized tyranny and the
spirit of civil and religious liberty, was already foreshadowed. The