this. President Jeannin, too, just before his departure, handed in to
the States-General an eloquent appeal on behalf of the Catholics of the
Netherlands; a paper which was not immediately made public.

"Consider the great number of Catholics," he said, "in your territory,
both in the cities and the country. Remember that they have worked with
you; spent their property, have been exposed to the same dangers, and
have always kept their fidelity to the commonwealth inviolate as long as
the war endured, never complaining that they did not enjoy liberty of
religious worship, believing that you had thus, ordained because the
public safety required such guaranty. But they always promised
themselves, should the end of the war be happy, and should you be placed
in the enjoyment of entire freedom, that they too would have some part in
this good fortune, even as they had been sharers in the inconveniences,
the expenses, and the perils of the war.

"But those cannot be said to share in any enjoyment from whom has been
taken the power of serving God according to the religion in which they
were brought up. On the contrary, no slavery is more intolerable nor
more exasperates the mind than such restraint. You know this well, my
lords States; you know too that it was the principal, the most puissant
cause that made you fly to arms and scorn all dangers, in order to effect
your deliverance from this servitude. You know that it has excited
similar movements in various parts of Christendom, and even in the
kingdom of France, with such fortunate success everywhere as to make it
appear that God had so willed it, in order to prove that religion ought
to be taught and inspired by the movements which come from the Holy
Ghost, and not by the force of man. Thus kings and princes should be
induced by the evils and ruin which they and their subjects have suffered
from this cause, as by a sentiment of their own interest, to take more