should never fall back under the dominion of Spain. He had long
maintained the impossibility of effecting their thorough independence
except by continuing the war, and had only with reluctance acquiesced in
the arguments of the French ambassadors in favour of peace negotiations.
As to the truce, he vehemently assured those envoys that it was but a
trap. How could the Netherlanders know who their friends might be when
the truce should have expired, and under what unfavourable auspices they
might not be compelled to resume hostilities?

As if he had been actually present at the council boards in Madrid and
Valladolid, or had been reading the secret letters of Friar John to
Spinola, he affirmed that the only object of Spain was to recruit her
strength and improve her finances, now entirely exhausted. He believed,
on the other hand, that the people of the provinces, after they should
have once become accustomed to repose; would shrink from exchanging their
lucrative pursuits for war, and would prefer to fall back under the yoke
of Spain. During the truce they would object to the furnishing of
necessary contributions for garrison expenses, and the result would be
that the most important cities and strongholds, especially those on the
frontier, which were mainly inhabited by Catholics, would become
insecure. Being hostile to a Government which only controlled them by
force, they would with difficulty be kept in check by diminished
garrisons, unless they should obtain liberty of Catholic worship.

It is a dismal proof of the inability of a leading mind, after half a
century's war, to comprehend the true lesson of the war--that toleration
of the Roman religion seemed to Maurice an entirely inadmissible idea.
The prince could not rise to the height on which his illustrious father
had stood; and those about him, who encouraged him in his hostility to
Catholicism, denounced Barneveld and Arminius as no better than traitors