rebel chief would have preferred to continue the war--should aspire to
rule by hereditary right a land with which his name and his race were
indelibly associated by countless sacrifices and heroic achievements.

It was no crime in Maurice to desire the sovereignty. It was still less
a crime in Barneveld to believe that he desired it. There was no special
reason why the Prince should love the republican form of government
provided that an hereditary one could be legally substituted for it.
He had sworn allegiance to the statutes, customs, and privileges of each
of the provinces of which he had been elected stadholder, but there would
have been no treason on his part if the name and dignity of stadholder
should be changed by the States themselves for those of King or sovereign
Prince.

Yet it was a chief grievance against the Advocate on the part of the
Prince that Barneveld believed him capable of this ambition.

The Republic existed as a fact, but it had not long existed, nor had it
ever received a formal baptism. So undefined was its constitution, and
so conflicting were the various opinions in regard to it of eminent men,
that it would be difficult to say how high-treason could be committed
against it. Great lawyers of highest intellect and learning believed the
sovereign power to reside in the separate states, others found that
sovereignty in the city magistracies, while during a feverish period of
war and tumult the supreme function had without any written constitution,
any organic law, practically devolved upon the States-General, who had
now begun to claim it as a right. The Republic was neither venerable by
age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers,
manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and
exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have