General, a proceeding directly in the teeth of the Act of Union and other
treaties, and before a Synod which people called National, and that
meantime every effort was making to discredit all those who stood up for
the laws of these Provinces and to make them odious and despicable in the
eyes of the common people.

"Especially it was I that was thus made the object of hatred and contempt
in their eyes. Hundreds of lies and calumnies, circulated in the form of
libels, seditious pamphlets, and lampoons, compelled me to return from
Utrecht to the Hague. Since that time I have repeatedly offered my
services to your Excellency for the promotion of mutual accommodation and
reconciliation of differences, but without success."

He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing,
'The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor', and which
was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his
deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that
if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious
libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the
princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be
the issue. "The Spanish government could desire no better counsel,"
he said, "than this which these fellows give you; to encourage distrust
and estrangement between your Excellency and the nobles, the cities, and
the magistrates of the land and to propose high and haughty imaginings
which are easy enough to write, but most difficult to practise, and which
can only enure to the advantage of Spain. Therefore most respectfully I
beg your Excellency not to believe these fellows, but to reject their
counsels . . . . Among them are many malignant hypocrites and
ambitious men who are seeking their own profit in these changes of
government--many utterly ragged and beggarly fellows and many infamous