violent attack shall be made upon the duchies, or upon any of the
princes, estates, or cities of the Holy Empire, as is required for the
peace and tranquillity of Christendom, and if all the powers interested
therein will come into a good and solid convention to that effect. My
Lords the States will gladly join in such undertaking and bind themselves
as firmly as the other powers. If no infraction of the laws and
liberties of the Holy Empire be attempted, there will be peace for
Germany and its neighbours. But the present extravagant proposition can
only lead to chicane and quarrels. To press such a measure is merely to
inflict a disgrace upon us. It is an attempt to prevent us from helping
the Elector-Palatine and the other Protestant princes of Germany and
coreligionists everywhere against hostile violence. For the Elector-
Palatine can receive aid from us and from Great Britain through the
duchies only. It is plainly the object of the enemy to seclude us from
the Palatine and the rest of Protestant Germany. It is very suspicious
that the proposition of Prince Maurice, supported by the two kings and
the united princes of Germany, has been rejected."

The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by
the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace
with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was expiring
--with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his
inheritance--would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained
by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no
longer. What had been extorted from the Catholic powers by force would
be retracted by force whenever that force could be concentrated. It had
been necessary for the Republic to accept a twelve years' truce with
Spain in default of a peace, while the death of John of Cleve, and
subsequently of Henry IV., had made the acquisition of a permanent
pacification between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the League