representatives of the smaller towns and of the rural population. But,
as a matter of fact, the influence of this caste had of late years very
rapidly diminished, through its decrease in numbers, and the far more
rapid increase in wealth and power of the commercial and manufacturing
classes. Individual nobles were constantly employed in the military,
civil, and diplomatic service of the republic, but their body had ceased
to be a power. It had been. the policy of William the Silent to
increase the number of cities entitled to send deputies to the States;
for it was among the cities that his resistance to the tyranny of Spain,
and his efforts to obtain complete independence for his country, had been
mainly supported. Many of the great nobles, as has been seen in these
pages, denounced the liberator and took sides with the tyrant. Lamoral
Egmont had walked to the scaffold to which Philip had condemned him,
chanting a prayer for Philip's welfare. Egmont's eldest son was now
foremost in the Spanish army, doing battle against his own country in
behalf of the tyrant who had taken his father's life. Aremberg and
Ligny, Arachot, Chimay, Croy, Caprea, Montigny, and most of the great
patrician families of the Netherlands fought on the royal side.

The revolution which had saved the country from perdition and created the
great Netherland republic was a burgher revolution, and burgher statesmen
now controlled the State. The burgher class of Europe is not the one
that has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history,
or that has distinguished itself--especially in more modern times--
by a passionate love of liberty. It is always easy to sneer at Hans
Miller and Hans Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are
powerful. Yet the burghers played a prominent part in the great drama
which forms my theme, and there has rarely been seen a more solid or
powerful type of their class than the burgher statesman, John of Olden-
Barneveld, who, since the death of William the Silent and the departure