patriotically. Language could not be devised to declare more plainly
than was done by this treaty that the central government of the League
had neither wish nor right to concern itself with the religious affairs
of the separate cities or provinces. If it permitted both Papists and
Protestants to associate themselves against the common foe, it could
hardly have been imagined, when the Articles were drawn, that it would
have claimed the exclusive right to define the minutest points in a
single Protestant creed.

And if the exclusively secular parts of the polity prevailing in the
country were clumsy, irregular, and even monstrous, and if its defects
had been flagrantly demonstrated by recent events, a more reasonable
method of reforming the laws might have been found than the imprisonment
of a man who had faithfully administered them forty years long.

A great commonwealth had grown out of a petty feudal organism, like an
oak from an acorn in a crevice, gnarled and distorted, though wide-
spreading and vigorous. It seemed perilous to deal radically with such a
polity, and an almost timid conservatism on the part of its guardians in
such an age of tempests might be pardonable.

Moreover, as before remarked, the apparent imbecility resulting from
confederacy and municipalism combined was for a season remedied by the
actual preponderance of Holland. Two-thirds of the total wealth and
strength of the seven republics being concentrated in one province, the
desired union seemed almost gained by the practical solution of all in
that single republic. But this was one great cause of the general
disaster.

It would be a thankless and tedious task to wander through the wilderness