History of the United Netherlands, 1608b | Page 4

only object of Spain was to recruit her

strength and improve her finances, now entirely exhausted. He believed,
on the other hand, that the people of the provinces, after they should
have once become accustomed to repose; would shrink from
exchanging their lucrative pursuits for war, and would prefer to fall
back under the yoke of Spain. During the truce they would object to the
furnishing of necessary contributions for garrison expenses, and the
result would be that the most important cities and strongholds,
especially those on the frontier, which were mainly inhabited by
Catholics, would become insecure. Being hostile to a Government
which only controlled them by force, they would with difficulty be kept
in check by diminished garrisons, unless they should obtain liberty of
Catholic worship.
It is a dismal proof of the inability of a leading mind, after half a
century's war, to comprehend the true lesson of the war--that toleration
of the Roman religion seemed to Maurice an entirely inadmissible idea.
The prince could not rise to the height on which his illustrious father
had stood; and those about him, who encouraged him in his hostility to
Catholicism, denounced Barneveld and Arminius as no better than
traitors and atheists. In the eyes of the extreme party, the mighty war
had been waged, not to liberate human thought, but to enforce
predestination; and heretics to Calvinism were as offensive in their eyes
as Jews and Saracens had ever been to Torquemada.
The reasons were unanswerable for the refusal of the States to bind
themselves to a foreign sovereign in regard to the interior
administration of their commonwealth; but that diversity of religious
worship should be considered incompatible with the health of the
young republic--that the men who had so bravely fought the Spanish
Inquisition should now claim their own right of inquisition into the
human conscience--this was almost enough to create despair as to the
possibility of the world's progress. The seed of intellectual
advancement is slow in ripening, and it is almost invariably the case
that the generation which plants--often but half conscious of the
mightiness of its work--is not the generation which reaps the harvest.
But all mankind at last inherits what is sown in the blood and tears of a
few. That Government, whether regal or democratic, should dare to
thrust itself between man and his Maker--that the State, not with
interfering in a thousand superfluous ways with the freedom of

individual human action in the business of life, should combine with
the Church to reduce human thought to slavery in regard to the sacred
interests of eternity, was one day to be esteemed a blasphemous
presumption in lands which deserved to call themselves free. But that
hour had not yet come.
"If the garrisons should be weakened," said the prince, "nothing could
be expected from the political fidelity of the town populations in
question, unless they should be allowed the exercise of their own
religion. But the States could hardly be disposed to grant this
voluntarily, for fear of injuring the general insecurity and violating the
laws of the commonwealth, built as it is upon a foundation which
cannot suffer this diversity in the public exercise of religion. Already,"
continued Maurice, "there are the seeds of dissension in the provinces
and in the cities, sure to ripen in the idleness and repose of peace to an
open division. This would give the enemy a means of intriguing with
and corrupting those who are already wickedly inclined."
Thus in the year 1608, the head of the Dutch republic, the son of
William the Silent, seemed to express himself in favour of continuing a
horrible war, not to maintain the political independence of his country,
but to prevent Catholics from acquiring the right of publicly
worshipping God according to the dictates of their conscience.
Yet it would be unjust to the prince, whose patriotism was as pure and
unsullied as his sword, to confound his motives with his end. He was
firmly convinced that liberty of religious worship, to be acquired
during the truce, would inevitably cause the United Provinces to fall
once more under the Spanish yoke. The French ambassador, with
whom he conferred every day, never doubted his sincerity. Gelderland,
Friesland, Overyssel, Groningen, and Utrecht, five provinces out of the
united seven, the prince declared to be chiefly inhabited by Catholics.
They had only entered the union, he said, because compelled by force.
They could only be kept in the union by force, unless allowed freedom
of religion. His inference from such a lamentable state of affairs was,
not that the experiment of religious worship should be tried, but that the
garrisons throughout the five provinces ought to be redoubled, and the
war with Spain indefinitely waged. The President was likewise of
opinion that "a