He had denounced the recent and paltry proposition made on the part of
the League, and originally suggested by James, as a most open and
transparent trap, into which none but the blind would thrust themselves.
The Treaty of Xanten, carried out as it had been signed and guaranteed by
the great Catholic powers, would have brought peace to Christendom. To
accept in place of such guarantee the pledge of a simple soldier, who
to-morrow might be nothing, was almost too ridiculous a proposal to be
answered gravely. Yet Barneveld through the machinations of the Catholic
party was denounced both at the English and French courts as an obstacle
to peace, when in reality his powerful mind and his immense industry were
steadily directed to the noblest possible end--to bring about a solemn
engagement on the part of Spain, the Emperor, and the princes of the
League, to attack none of the Protestant powers of Germany, especially
the Elector-Palatine, but to leave the laws, liberties, and privileges of
the States within the Empire in their original condition. And among
those laws were the great statutes of 1609 and 1610, the "Majesty-Letter"
and the "Compromise," granting full right of religious worship to the
Protestants of the Kingdom of Bohemia. If ever a policy deserved to be
called truly liberal and truly conservative, it was the policy thus
steadily maintained by Barneveld.

Adverting to the subterfuge by which the Catholic party had sought
to set aside the treaty of Xanten, he instructed Langerac, the States'
ambassador in Paris, and his own pupils to make it clear to the French
government that it was impossible that in such arrangements the Spanish
armies would not be back again in the duchies at a moment's notice.
It could not be imagined even that they were acting sincerely.

"If their upright intention," he said, "is that no actual, hostile,