History of the United Netherlands, 1585 part 4 | Page 9

time to be wasted. Let us not painfully, build
a wall only to knock our own heads against it, to the dismay of our
friends and the gratification of our enemies."
It was at last arranged that an important blank should be left in the
articles to be brought by the deputies, upon which vacant place the
names of certain cautionary towns, afterwards to be agreed upon, were
to be inscribed by common consent.
Meantime the English ministers were busy in preparing to receive the
commissioners, and to bring the Netherland matter handsomely before
the legislature.
The integrity, the caution, the thrift, the hesitation, which characterized
Elizabeth's government, were well pourtrayed in the habitual language
of the Lord Treasurer, chief minister of a third-rate kingdom now called
on to play a first-rate part, thoroughly acquainted with the moral and
intellectual power of the nation whose policy he directed, and
prophetically conscious of the great destinies which were opening upon
her horizon. Lord Burghley could hardly be censured--least of all
ridiculed--for the patient and somewhat timid attributes of his nature:
The ineffable ponderings, which might now be ludicrous, on the part of
a minister of the British Empire, with two hundred millions of subjects
and near a hundred millions of revenue, were almost inevitable in a

man guiding a realm of four millions of people with half a million of
income.
It was, on the whole, a strange negotiation, this between England and
Holland. A commonwealth had arisen, but was unconscious of the
strength which it was to find in the principle of states' union, and of
religious equality. It sought, on the contrary, to exchange its federal
sovereignty for provincial dependence, and to imitate, to a certain
extent, the very intolerance by which it had been driven into revolt. It
was not unnatural that the Netherlanders should hate the Roman
Catholic religion, in the name of which they had endured such infinite
tortures, but it is, nevertheless, painful to observe that they requested
Queen Elizabeth, whom they styled defender, not of "the faith" but of
the "reformed religion," to exclude from the Provinces, in case she
accepted the sovereignty, the exercise of all religious rites except those
belonging to the reformed church. They, however, expressly provided
against inquisition into conscience. Private houses were to be sacred,
the, papists free within their own walls, but the churches were to be
closed to those of the ancient faith. This was not so bad as to hang,
burn, drown, and bury alive nonconformists, as had been done by
Philip and the holy inquisition in the name of the church of Rome; nor
is it very surprising that the horrible past should have caused that
church to be regarded with sentiments of such deep-rooted hostility as
to make the Hollanders shudder at the idea of its re-establishment. Yet,
no doubt, it was idle for either Holland or England, at that day, to talk
of a reconciliation with Rome. A step had separated them, but it was a
step from a precipice. No human power could bridge the chasm. The
steep contrast between the league and the counter-league, between the
systems of Philip and Mucio, and that of Elizabeth and
Olden-Barneveld, ran through the whole world of thought, action, and
life.
But still the negociation between Holland and England was a strange
one. Holland wished to give herself entirely, and England feared to
accept. Elizabeth, in place of sovereignty, wanted mortgages; while
Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole. There
was no great inequality between the two countries. Both were
instinctively conscious, perhaps, of standing on the edge of a vast
expansion. Both felt that they were about to stretch their wings

suddenly for a flight over the whole earth. Yet each was a very inferior
power, in comparison with the great empires of the past or those which
then existed.
It is difficult, without a strong effort of the imagination, to reduce the
English empire to the slender proportions which belonged to her in the
days of Elizabeth. That epoch was full of light and life. The
constellations which have for centuries been shining in the English
firmament were then human creatures walking English earth. The
captains, statesmen, corsairs, merchant-adventurers, poets, dramatists,
the great Queen herself, the Cecils, Raleigh, Walsingham, Drake,
Hawkins, Gilbert, Howard, Willoughby, the Norrises, Essex, Leicester,
Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare and the lesser but brilliant lights which
surrounded him; such were the men who lifted England upon an
elevation to which she was not yet entitled by her material grandeur. At
last she had done with Rome, and her expansion dated from that
moment.
Holland and England, by the very condition of their existence, were
sworn foes to Philip. Elizabeth stood excommunicated of the Pope.
There was hardly a month