be not uninteresting to venture a glance into the internal structure and
workings of a republican and federal system of government, then for the
first time reproduced almost spontaneously upon an extended scale.

Perhaps the revelation of some of its defects, in spite of the faculty
and vitality struggling against them, may not be without value for our
own country and epoch. The system of Switzerland was too limited and
homely, that of Venice too purely oligarchical, to have much moral for
us now, or to render a study of their pathological phenomena especially
instructive. The lessons taught us by the history of the Netherland
confederacy may have more permanent meaning.

Moreover, the character of a very considerable statesman at an all-
important epoch, and in a position of vast responsibility, is always an
historical possession of value to mankind. That of him who furnishes the
chief theme for these pages has been either overlooked and neglected or
perhaps misunderstood by posterity. History has not too many really
important and emblematic men on its records to dispense with the memory
of Barneveld, and the writer therefore makes no apology for dilating
somewhat fully upon his lifework by means of much of his entirely
unpublished and long forgotten utterances.

The Advocate had ceaselessly been sounding the alarm in Germany. For the
Protestant Union, fascinated, as it were, by the threatening look of the
Catholic League, seemed relapsing into a drowse.

"I believe," he said to one of his agents in that country, "that the
Evangelical electors and princes and the other estates are not alive to
the danger. I am sure that it is not apprehended in Great Britain.
France is threatened with troubles. These are the means to subjugate the