who considered themselves as representing small nationalities 'dejure et
de facto', and as succeeding to the supreme power at the very instant in
which allegiance to the Spanish monarch was renounced. The general
assembly was a collection of diplomatic envoys, bound by instructions
from independent states. The voting was not by heads, but by states.
The deputies were not representatives of the people, but of the states;
for the people of the United States of the Netherlands never assembled--
as did the people of the United States of America two centuries later--to
lay down a constitution, by which they granted a generous amount of power
to the union, while they reserved enough of sovereign attributes to
secure that local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty.

The Union of Utrecht; narrowed as it was to the nether portion of that
country which, as a whole, might have formed a commonwealth so much more
powerful, was in origin a proof of this lamentable want of patriotism.
Could the jealousy of great nobles, the rancour of religious differences,
the Catholic bigotry of the Walloon population, on the one side,
contending with the democratic insanity of the Ghent populace on the
other, have been restrained within bounds by the moderate counsels of
William of Orange, it would have been possible to unite seventeen
provinces instead of seven, and to save many long and blighting years of
civil war.

The Utrecht Union was, however, of inestimable value. It was time for
some step to be taken, if anarchy were not to reign until the inquisition
and absolutism were restored. Already, out of Chaos and Night, the
coming Republic was assuming substance and form. The union, if it
created nothing else, at least constructed a league against a foreign
foe whose armed masses were pouring faster and faster into the territory
of the provinces. Farther than this it did not propose to go.