magistrates, they were equally odious to him, and he had long since
determined that they should be razed to the ground. In short, he
believed that the estates had thrust their heads into the lion's mouth,
and he foresaw the most gloomy consequences from the treaty which had
just been concluded. He believed, to use his own language, "that the
only difference between Don John and Alva or Requesens was, that he was
younger and more foolish than his predecessors, less capable of
concealing his venom, more impatient, to dip his hands in blood."

In the Pacification of Ghent, the Prince had achieved the prize of his
life-long labors. He had banded a mass of provinces by the ties of a
common history, language, and customs, into a league against a foreign
tyranny. He had grappled Holland and Zealand to their sister provinces
by a common love for their ancient liberties, by a common hatred to a
Spanish soldiery. He had exorcised the evil demon of religious bigotry
by which the body politic had been possessed so many years; for the Ghent
treaty, largely interpreted, opened the door to universal toleration. In
the Perpetual Edict the Prince saw his work undone. Holland and Zealand
were again cut adrift from the other fifteen provinces, and war would
soon be let loose upon that devoted little territory. The article
stipulating the maintenance of the Ghent treaty he regarded as idle wind;
the solemn saws of the State Council and the quiddities from Louvain
being likely to prove but slender bulwarks against the returning tide of
tyranny. Either it was tacitly intended to tolerate the Reformed
religion, or to hunt it down. To argue that the Ghent treaty, loyally
interpreted, strengthened ecclesiastical or royal despotism, was to
contend that a maniac was more dangerous in fetters than when armed with
a sword; it was to be blind to the difference between a private
conventicle and a public scaffold. The Perpetual Edict, while affecting
to sustain the treaty, would necessarily destroy it at a blow, while