bulwark by preventing the unnecessary schism which might prove its ruin.
Many questions of property, too, were involved in the question--the
church buildings, lands and pastures belonging to the Counts of Holland
and their successors--the States having always exercised the right of
church patronage--'jus patronatus'--a privilege which, as well as
inherited or purchased advowsons, had been of late flagrantly interfered
with.

He was asked if he had not said that it had never been the intention of
the States-General to carry on the war for this or that religion.

He replied that he had told certain clergymen expressing to him their
opinion that the war had been waged solely for the furtherance of their
especial shade of belief, that in his view the war had been undertaken
for the conservation of the liberties and laws of the land, and of its
good people. Of that freedom the first and foremost point was the true
Christian religion and liberty of conscience and opinion. There must be
religion in the Republic, he had said, but that the war was carried on to
sustain the opinion of one doctor of divinity or another on--differential
points was something he had never heard of and could never believe. The
good citizens of the country had as much right to hold by Melancthon as
by Calvin or Beza. He knew that the first proclamations in regard to the
war declared it to be undertaken for freedom of conscience, and so to
his, own knowledge it had been always carried on.

He was asked if he had not promised during the Truce negotiations so to
direct matters that the Catholics with time might obtain public exercise
of their religion.

He replied that this was a notorious falsehood and calumny, adding that